[Active life expectancy, life expectancy and ADL in Japanese elderly]

The purpose of the present Study is to analyze the incidence of loss of active life and death rates over a 36 month period in elderly people living a home, to attempt to determine relationships of index of ADL for bed ridden elderly to incidence and expectancies of active life loss, for life and active life. The definition of loss of activities was as follows: Long term (over six months) medication at home, long term (over six months) admission to hospital or intermediate institute for elderly, admission to nursing home or death. Subjects were 6,883 people living at home in Ogi, Sage prefecture, aged 70 years or older. A total of 6,753 people could be followed up for thirty six months, with 287 people having long term medication at home, 389 people having long term admission in hospital or intermediate institute for elderly, 45 people were admission to nursing home and of these groups defined as experiencing, 490 people were died of all subjects, 746 deaths were observed. The main results were as follows: (1) Annual mortality rate was 5.4% for males, 3.0% for females, and annual rate of active life loss was 7.1% for males, 6.0% for females. Life expectancy for the 70-74 year group was 13.7 years for male, 17.9 years for female, and active life expectancy for the 70-74 year group was 12.0 year for males, 13.9 years for females. The difference between life expectancy and active life expectancy was 1.7 years for male, 4.2 years for female, which can be considered the average length of term requiring care. (2) From the relation between scale of active daily living for the handicapped elderly and the life expectancies of life and active life by Cox proportional hazard model analysis of survival, controlling for age and sex, five categories of classification for active daily living for a handicapped elderly were developed: 1-very healthy with abilities for using transportation (train and bus); 2-abilities of moving in the neighborhood by oneself; 3-abilities of moving in the neighborhood with help; 4-Chair-bound, 5-Bed-bound.