Alcohol consumption in a community sample of older people.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the prevalence and pattern of alcohol use among community-living elderly Australians.


METHODS
A survey was conducted of randomly selected non-institutionalised people aged 75 years and older living in the inner western suburbs of Sydney. Personal interviews by trained interviewers covered background demographic information and self-reported alcohol use.


RESULTS
72% of men and 54% of women drank alcohol. The median usual daily volume of ethanol consumed by drinkers was 10 grams for men and 1.3 grams for women. However 11% of male drinkers and 6% of female drinkers consumed at defined hazardous or harmful levels.


CONCLUSIONS
Although a sizeable majority of these older people were either non-drinkers or very light drinkers, a small but important proportion drank in the hazardous to harmful range. Despite increasing evidence of the health benefits of alcohol consumption it remains important to be alert for potentially harmful alcohol use among older people.
Department of Sociology, Australian National University, Canberra. Owen.Dent@anu.edu.au
O F
OF
Dent
D A
DA
Grayson
L M
LM
Waite
J S
JS
Cullen
H
H
Creasey
G A
GA
Broe
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003625:Data Collection; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009517:New South Wales / Q000453:epidemiology; D015995:Prevalence