Physical activity level in elderly assisted in an outpatient of comprehensive health care

Abstract

Background: Old age brings many changes and deleterious effects with advancing age, to minimize these declines regular physical activity has a positive effect on prevention and promotion of health of the elderly. Objective: To identify physical activity level in elderly assisted in an outpatient of comprehensive health care. Materials and methods: Cross-sectional study with 42 elderly treated at a clinic from a private university in São Luís-MA, conducted between the months from March to May 2015. We collected data on sociodemographic, economic, clinical and nutritional characteristics, anthropometric measurements and physical activity through the IPAQ (International Physical Activity Questionnaire). It was used the procedures of descriptive statistics and measures of association where the level of significance adopted was p <0.05. Data were analyzed using program Stata 12.0®. Results: The distribution between age groups showed a higher proportion of elderly between 60 and 69 yrs. (54.76%), 78.57% had only elementary education, married (57.14%), retired (52.38%) and received up to 3 minimum wages (76.16%). Regarding physical activity, 80.95% were inactive, being more pronounced with increasing age (42.86%), associated with this, overweight diagnosis (13.8%), affected by hypertension (22,7%), large medication use (47.62%) and risk for cardiovascular diseases (23.5%). Conclusion: The findings of the study suggest the need for intervention and encouraging physical activity associated with healthy living habits, considering besides the health aspects of older, the reality of this population.