Influence of multimorbidity patterns on the activities in the day-to-day lives of the elderly: nine-year follow-up of the Fibra Study

Abstract

The scope of this article was to evaluate the influence of multimorbidity and associated effects on the activities in the day-to-day lives of community-dwelling elderly individuals. It involved a cohort study with data from the FIBRA Study, the baseline (2008-2009) and follow-up (2016-2017). The basic activities in daily living (ADL) were evaluated using Katz’s index, and the chronic diseases were classified as: (1) multimorbidity and multimorbidity patterns; (2) cardiopulmonary; (3) vascular-metabolic; and (4) mental-musculoskeletal. The chi-square test and Poisson regression data were used for analysis. A total of 861 older adults with no functional dependency at baseline were analyzed. Elderly individuals with multimorbidity (RR = 1.58; 95%CI: 1.19-2.10) and classified according to cardiopulmonary (RR = 2.43; 95%CI: 1.77-3.33), vascular-metabolic (RR = 1.50; 95%CI: 1.19-1.89) and mental-musculoskeletal (RR = 1.30; 95%CI: 1.03-1.65) had a higher risk of presenting functional decline in ADL in the follow-up compared to those who didn’t have the same disease patterns. Multimorbidity and its patterns increased the risk of functional disability in older adults over the nine-year period.

Key words:
Multimorbidity; Daily living activities; Elderly individuals; Longitudinal studies