A community based study of health related quality of life of the elderly in urban India.

The increasing population of elderly and emergence of chronic diseases, which adversely affects their quality of life, have implications in form of rising burden on the health systems in developing countries like India. A study was conducted to know the common morbidities and their effect on the health related quality of life (HRQOL) of the elderly. A community based cross-sectional study was conducted and 200 subjects, selected by cluster sampling from central Delhi, India, were studied from April 2005-February 2006. A pretested, semi-structured questionnaire along with short form-36 (SF-36) survey was used for data collection. The data was analysed using Chi-square and Student's 't' test on SPSS 12 statistical software. There were 89 males and 111 females, majority (64.5%) between 60 and 69 years of the age, were included in the study; 68.0% men and 37.8% of the women were married at the time of the study. Mean number of morbidities was 2.25 and 71.5% subjects had at least one disability/impairment. Around 2.5% subjects reported their health being poor and, another 50% of worsening of their health in last one year. HRQOL score for people with and without chronic morbidity/disability was 51.8 and 73.5 respectively with mean being at 56.7 (p < 0.05). Most commonly affected HRQOL domains were role physical, physical functioning and general health. Scores decreased as the age increased with females having less mean scores than males (p < 0.05). The quality of life of elderly in urban India is severely affected by the disabilities, impairments and chronic morbidities. There is an immediate need for specific preventive and rehabilitative measures targeted on elderly to maintain their quality of life in this population in Delhi.