Health-related quality of life of institutionalized older adults: Influence of physical, nutritional and self-perceived health status.

Introduction: Institutionalized older adults have higher risks of diseases and worse health-related quality of life (HRQoL) than noninstitutionalized.

Objective: To evaluate the influence of physical state, nutritional status and self-perceived general health and oral health on the quality of life of institutionalized older adults in two Brazilian cities.

Methods: A multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in 17 homes for the aged of two Brazilian cities. Six trained researchers interviewed 344 older adults. The performance of activities of daily living (Katz scale) and frailty status (Fried scale) were applied to evaluate the physical state. The Mini Nutritional Assessment Short-Form (MNA-SF®) and the body composition were used to screening the nutritional status. A hand dynamometer was used to measure the dominant hand grip strength. The 12-Item Short Form Survey for self-perceived health (SF-12) was used to determine the HRQoL. A Likert scale was used to assess the general and oral health self-perception. Multiple Poisson regression model was applied to analyze the data (α = 0.05).

Results: The mean (SD) score of the SF-12 was 60.89 (14.50) points. The factors associated with the highest SF-12 score were being able to walk, being nonfrail, being normal nourished, taking fewer medications, having greater dominant hand grip strength and higher self- perceived general health (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: Better HRQoL in institutionalized older adults was associated with better physical state, nutritional status and self-perceived general health.