Lifestyle still predicts mortality in older men with established vascular disease.
BACKGROUND
It is uncertain whether accepted associations between health behaviors and mortality are pertinent to elderly people. No previous studies have examined the patterns of lifestyle in elderly men with and without clinically evident vascular disease by using a lifestyle score to predict survival.


METHODS
We measured prevalence of a healthy lifestyle (four or more healthy behaviors out of eight) and examined survival in 11,745 men aged 65-83 years participating in a randomized population-based trial of screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm in Perth, Western Australia. After stratifying participants into five groups according to history and symptoms of vascular disease, we compared survival of men in each subgroup with that of 'healthy' men with no history or symptoms of vascular disease.


RESULTS
Invitations to screening produced a corrected response of 70.5%. After adjusting for age and place of birth, having an unhealthy lifestyle was associated with an increase of 20% in the likelihood of death from any cause within 5 years (95% CI: 10-30%). This pattern was consistently evident across subgroups defined by history of vascular disease, but was less evident for deaths from vascular disease.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results highlight the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle through to old age, regardless of history of vascular disease.
Spencer
Carole A
CA
School of Population Health, The University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Australia.
Jamrozik
Konrad
K
Lawrence-Brown
Michael
M
Norman
Paul E
PE
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000401:mortality*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D015996:Survival Rate; D014904:Western Australia / Q000453:epidemiology