[ELDERLY CARDIAC PATIENTS: SELF-REPORTED HEALTH STATUS].

Introduction: Thanks to advances in science and medicine, the threshold age of a patient who can undergo open surgery on the valves of the heart or coronary arteries is increasing every year. Elderly patients constitute a special group in this regard.

Aim: Determine how elderly cardiac patients assess their health status and highlight the factors influencing it.

Materials And Methods: The results of a survey of 107 patients who are in the Department of cardiac rehabilitation of the A. N. Bakulev National Medical Research Center for Cardiovascular Surgery in 2020-2021 after surgical or endovascular treatment of cardiac pathology. The survey is carried out by a cardiologist using a questionnaire that allows you to characterize the patient's health status on the basis of self-esteem. Statistical data processing was carried out in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Statistica v. 6.0 programs.

Results: The majority of respondents (63.6%) assessed their state of health as satisfactory. No correlation was found between the state of health and the level of education. On average, the patients had 3.7 ± 1.8 chronic diseases. Obesity was observed in 29.4% of men and 68.8% of women. The body mass index did not correlate with the self-reported health status of the respondents, but it did correlate with the number of accumulated diseases (r = 0.42, t-statistic = 2.58).

Conclusions: Recovery of elderly patients after cardiac surgery is progressing rapidly. In women, the recovery process is slower due to the greater number of associated pathologies. Old age is not a direct contraindication for cardiac surgery. When self-assessing their health status, elderly patients do not associate it with risk factors.