[Individual background factors for "cannot go out alone to distant places" among medium elderly persons living alone...

To verify whether the statement "cannot go out alone to distant places" should be considered a risk factor for disability among medium elderly persons living alone autonomously in a metropolitan suburban environment, the present cross-sectional study was performed.

Self-rated mobility levels in elderly persons living alone were surveyed by questionnaire in 1,216 elderly people (209 male, 1007 female) aged 65 to 74 years, living in a metropolitan suburb, who had autonomy and ambulation competence. Two categories were used for evaluation of the self-rated mobility level: the A group were those who were able to go out alone to distant places and the B group were those who were able to do so in the locality, but not to distant places without help (cannot go out alone to distant places). Factors such as everyday lifestyle, self-rated health, and psychological, functional, physical and social items were investigated.

Although the frequency of going out was nearly the same between the A and B groups, the B group showed the lower hobby and association activity in social communities. Individual factors such as self-rated health, instrumental activities of daily living (Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology), eyesight, masticatory ability, 1 km continuous walking, pedestrian crossing walking on a green light, and fracture history, medicine intake, cerebrovascular disorder related subjective symptoms, intermittent claudication related subjective symptoms, physical pain, symptoms of depression, daytime sleep, number of meals, and no regular walking and light gymnastic exercises demonstrated significant differences in levels between the A and B groups. The B group had characteristics of lower social activities in social communities, deterioration of physical functions, subjective symptoms of sickness and depression, and a worse self-rated level of health. On stepwise multiple logistic regression analysis, individual frailty-risk factors related to "cannot go out alone to distant places", were "inability to continuously walk a distance of 1 km", "lower masticatory ability", "having depressive symptoms", and "having symptoms of intermittent claudication".

The findings from this study show that with autonomous medium elderly persons, those who "cannot go out alone to distant places" have risk factors for a trend toward disability.