Avaliação cognitiva de idosos institucionalizados no abrigo São José em Macapá - AP

Abstract

There has always been a concern in studying aging, but it was from the 20th century, due to population aging, gerontology flourished. Moreover, attending elderly patients will be common for all health professionals, in a near future, regardless of their area of expertise. In view of the above and the lack of studies on the mental health of older people in the Amazon region, especially institutionalized, this work is necessary. On this basis, this study aimed to evaluate the cognitive ability and trace the epidemiological and socioeconomic profile of the institutionalized elderly in the shelter “São José”, located in the city of Macapá-AP, and the association between epidemiological and socioeconomic characteristics and the cognition of this population. To achieve this goal, a cross-sectional, descriptive, quantitative approach was used. As a data collection instrument, the Mini-Mental State Examination was chosen and also a sociodemographic questionnaire, specifically created by the project team, aiming to relate cognition with different characteristics of the study population, for example, age, habits such as drinking alcohol and smoking , previous occupation, comorbidities, medication use, education level and income. Of the 58 institutionalized, 37 met the inclusion criteria and therefore participated in the survey. The average age of the elderly was 78.24 ± 9.46 years, 62.1% were illiterate, 83.8% male, 70.2% single and 67.5% considered themselves browns. Regarding the prior occupation, most were laborers (67.5%), while the economic situation, in turn, had 72.9% of elderly people receiving benefit of continued provision. Regarding habits, 56.7% are/were alcoholics, 64.86% are/were smokers. As for comorbidities and medications, the pathologies of the cardiovascular system were the most prevalent, especially systemic hypertension (64.8%), as well as the drugs that acted in this system (72.97%), and 48.6% subjects were on at least 2 or 3 medications chronically. With regard to the Mini-Mental State Examination, it was found an average of 15.18 ± 5.79 and sex was the only variable that had a statistically significant correlation with cognition, however, most of the results were consistent with the current literature. Finally, it is concluded that this work may provide new benefits for further research, to investigate not only cognition, but also other factors that may be involved in the onset of dementia in institutionalized elderly.