Quality Of Life Of The Elderly

Quality of life of the elderly

The quality of life, in the field of health, is a concept generated from the knowledge of the link between the increase in chronic diseases and the development of research on the quality of life, also, health quality is qualityof life focused from the angle of medicine. As far as today, it refers as “the patient’s perception of the effects of a certain disease or the application of a certain treatment, especially the consequences on their physical, emotional and social well -being” (Robles et al., 2016, p.33). Then, it can be broken down that the quality of health is, in essence, the objective measurement of the subjective evaluation that a person performs regarding their state of health within the social and cultural margin of which it participates. Therefore, we can consider that health takes different reins depending generally on a relevant population variable such as age or in this case age intervals.

Elderly

According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015), it is considered as older adults over 60 years old. Knowing this, we can say that in Peru a population phenomenon of aging has been developed, due to the considerable reduction of mortality in the early stages of life, and mortality from infectious diseases, so, the National Institute of Statisticsand computer science (INEI, 2015) assured that the population over 60 represented 9.7%, of which, those over 80 were the group with the highest population growth rate, also, population estimates indicate that by 2025 older adults will constitute between 12 and 13% of the Peruvian population.

Peculiarly, this growth marks an epidemiological transition stage characterized by the predominant increase of chronic diseases of the noncommissible type, which in turn is the main cause of death in old age (Varela, 2016). However, the INEI, in the second quarter of 2015, said that 80.5% of older adults in rural areas are affiliated with some kind of health insurance;while in the city and metropolitan Lima the percentage reached 76.3% and 76.4%, respectively. Also, the INEI (2014) stressed that 72.8% of older adults with diabetes have treatment for this. However, the amount of older adults with deficit in some sense of the word is overwhelming, since, according to Endes (2014), 18% of older adults were diagnosed with cataracts forecasting a regressive health and 39% of adultsgreater suffer from hypertension.