Predictive Ability of Seven Domains of the Kihon Checklist for Incident Dependency and Mortality

The Kihon Checklist (KCL) is a structured questionnaire consisting of 7 domains to assess seniors' function in daily living. The aim of this study was to examine which domains of the KCL can predict incident dependency and mortality. The municipality sent a KCL questionnaire to independent seniors in Higashi-ura Town and collected the answers of the 5542 seniors who provided complete answers. Their incident dependency and mortality were followed-up for 2.5 years. A Cox proportional hazard model indicated that meeting any of the criteria in instrumental activities of daily living, physical, nutrition, and mood domains significantly predicted the risk of dependency, whereas meeting any of the criteria in physical, nutrition and socialization domains significantly predicted the risk of mortality. Category assessment by the KCL could be useful to predict incident dependency and all-cause mortality.