2001 Volume 3 Issue 1 Pages 26-31
To obtain basic data for considering the care of housebound elderly persons, whose state has recently drawn attention from the standpoint of minimizing the necessity of nursing care for the elderly, an analysis of the incidence of housebound and its background factors in a certain town was performed. The survey was performed by questionnaire on 544 elderly subjects aged 65 or older extracted from the Basic Resident Register in consideration of family type, and also by recording the results of hearing and the observations of nurses. The questions were on the attributes, health condition, falls, lifestyle, roles, relationship with family members and friends, QOL, and environmental conditions. Excluding those who were bedridden, those suffering from dementia, and those prohibited from going outdoors for medical reasons, elderly subjects who went outdoors less than a few times a month were classified as "Housebound Group", and others as "Non-Housebound Group". The background factors of the two groups were compared by monovariate analysis using a single variant as an explanatory variable, and also, those items with significance less than 10% by the monovariate analysis were further analyzed by logistic regressive analysis. Out of a total of 472 respondents, the incidence of withdrawal was 6.6%. Items which were to be found significant as a result of multivariate analysis were whether the place of residence was on the side of a mountain or the sea, whether the respondent had friends or not, walking disability, and the regularity of lifestyle. Further research on the possibility of being bedridden among elderly people who are currently independent should be required. And it is also suggested that, in considering the care of elderly with a housebound state, it is important to pay attention to environmental conditions as well as the individual factors.
