Assessing functional status of the elderly

Abstract

Arthritis is the leading cause of changes in the functional status of older adults [ l ] . The increasing number of older adults and the increasing contact health professionals have with this segment of the population mandate that we be knowledgeable about the purposes, uses, and techniques of assessing functional status in our aging clients. Both theory and experience indicate that a functional status approach to problems of the elderly is more appro-priate than alternative approaches such as presence of disease, clinical status, or biological decline [Z-41.