Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
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To evaluate the impact of in-hospital pressure ulcer development on mortality among older, high-risk, hospitalized patients up to 1 year post-hospital discharge, after adjusting for baseline patient characteristics, disease severity, hospital complications, and discharge activity level. ⋯ Pressure ulcers that develop during acute hospitalization are not associated with reduced 1-year survival among high risk older persons after adjusting for nutritional and functional status, global measures of disease severity and co-morbidity, and noninfectious hospital complications.
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Understanding the contributors to physical disability in older adults is an important component of the national health objective of expanding disability-free life by the year 2000. The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency with which older adults attribute their difficulty performing a number of common daily tasks to "old age" and to identify specific conditions and diseases associated with this attribution. Finally we sought to determine the characteristics that might differentiate persons able to attribute their disability to specific conditions from those who cite old age as the etiology of their disability. ⋯ These data suggest that a significant proportion of functional decline attributed to "aging" in older adults may be associated with specific conditions. Identifying and reducing the impact of these conditions may prove to be a useful approach to preventing or minimizing functional loss.