title: Predictors of two-year mortality in older nursing home residents. The IRA study. Istituto di Riposo per Anziani.
abstract: Besides functional impairment, several factors have been associated with mortality in institutionalized older subjects, including advanced age, gender, comorbidity, and malnutrition. We investigated the possible association of a large number of factors, including functional, anthropometric, nutritional, metabolic, clinical, and demographic variables, with two-year all-cause mortality in a sample of 344 institutionalized older subjects (> or = 65 years) without evidence of acute illness at the time of observation. Although a number of factors were associated with mortality risk, multivariate analysis showed that only severe disability (6 vs 0-1 lost ADL, O.R.: 3.37, C.I. 95%: 1.76-7.3) and low albumin levels (lowest vs highest tertile: O.R.: 3.0, C.I. 95%: 1.65-5.43) were independent predictors of outcome. Moreover, in the analysis stratified for degree of disability and albumin tertiles, we found a strong gradient in mortality risk with increasing disability and decreasing albumin levels. These results further support the value of these two simple parameters in identifying frail institutionalized older individuals.
authors: Second Department of Internal Medicine, University of Ferrara, Italy.
authors: G
authors: G
authors: Zuliani
authors: F
authors: F
authors: Romagnoni
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Soattin
authors: V
authors: V
authors: Leoci
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Volpato
authors: R
authors: R
authors: Fellin
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D009026:Mortality; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016019:Survival Analysis