Health and Function in the Old and Very Old

This report advocates conceptual separation and parallel assessment of medically diagnosed health conditions and functional disability in clinical and epidemiological studies of the aged. Data from a study of urban elderly are presented to demonstrate how this can be done and to reexamine the meaning of self-reported illness and disability. One hundred thirteen subjects 74 to 95 years old, recruited from a longitudinal study of a representative sample of the elderly population of Cleveland, Ohio, participated in structured interviews and epidemiologically based medical examinations, conducted by a physician-nurse team at the place of residence. The presence or absence of 11 common chronic conditions was determined according to preestablished criteria, by self-report and, separately, by medical diagnostic evaluation. Functional disability was estimated by self-report and by physician-nurse assessment, using established measures of mobility and activities of daily living. Results indicate that interview self-report can provide useful estimates of the prevalence of medical conditions and functional disabilities in elderly populations, although self-report alone is not a sufficiently sensitive measure to be used for case-finding or diagnosis. When functional disabilities are matched against the specific medical conditions that cause them and disease-specific mortality is also taken into account, a three-dimensional classification results that has implications for future clinical and survey work with the elderly.