The profile of elderly people assisted in an ambulatory university service

Abstract

Objectives: Develop a database of elder people assisted in the Núcleo de Atenção ao Idoso – NAI/UFPE;identify the profile of the elderly in terms of socio-demographic and health variables; evaluate the scoreobtained on the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). Methodology: Quantitative research of exploratorydescriptive nature consisting on the analysis of 1,194 medical records of elderly participants between2000 and 2004. Results: Concerning the distribution by gender, 23.4% of the elderly are male and 76.6%are female. In relation to education, 60% had less than four years of study. The number of female widows(38%) was three times higher than the number of male widows (12%). The most prevalent clinical recordsof the elderly people’s health were: visual problems, hypertension, surgical history, dyslipidemia, dizziness,cataract, bone fractures, allergic reaction and sedentism. The performance on the MMSE had an averageof 24 (SD = 3.7) and median of 23.5. It was found that 4.9% of seniors have scored less than 10 points.Conclusions: Considering the importance of completeness in health care, the data investigated can supportthe structure of actions directed to the elderly patients at the ambulatory place studied.