Abstract
Objective
To estimate the prevalence of cognitive deficit and verify associations with sociodemographic and individual health variables in senior patients from units in the primary health system.
Method
Prevalence and association study about the elderly population. The instruments used were the Mini-Mental State Examination (cognitive function), Shorten Geriatric Depression Scale (depression symptoms), Lawton Scale (functional capacity), Mini-Nutritional Assessment (nutritional state), and Timed Up and Go Test (fall risk). The association between cognitive deficit and independent variables was verified by the Chi-square test. Multivariate analysis was performed using a logistic regression model with the prevalence ratio (PR) and 95% confidence interval (95%CI).
Results
The data were collected from 818 old-aged patients. The cognitive deficit had a prevalence of 65.9% (95%CI= 62.50-69.10). In the multivariate analysis model, it was verified a larger occurrence of cognitive deficit individuals, with risks of malnutrition (PR=2.09; CI95%=1.47-2.96), illiteracy (PR=1.66; 95%CI=1.15-2.40), dependents (PR=3.27; 95%CI=2.01-5.10), and with more than 70 years old (PR=1.48; 95%CI=1.07-2.05).
Conclusion
The present study showed a high prevalence of cognitive deficit and was associated with age, education, functional capacity, and nutritional status. It is possible to question if it is caused by the big amount of people with mild cognitive impairment without dementia with posterior remission of the symptoms, or by the occurrence of early start dementia.
Keywords
Aging; Cognitive Deficit; Dementia; Elderly; Prevalence