Original Articles
Márcia Olivei
Abstract
To verify the health status in the elderly who have suffered accidents and treated at a reference hospital for emergency care of Ceará, Brazil. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study, with quantitative approach, developed in an emergency hospital in the city of Fortaleza. For the sample, 182 elderly people were selected. The data were collected using the BOAS Questionnaire as a tool, exported to the statistical software STATA® v.12. Most of the elderly are women (67%); aged between 81 and 90 years (37.4%); have incomplete elementary school (53.31%); are widowed (48.3%); have a family income of one to two minimum wages (31.3%); are retired (68%); live with one or two people (48.3%). As for the perception of health, they refer to it as good (37%). Among the health problems, fall with fracture/injury and chronic diseases were the most frequent (48.3%). They reported having a great vision (39.5%); good hearing (44.8%); teeth in bad condition (79.9%), missing the majority (93.7%). About the presence of clinical depression, it was found that the elderly had no feeling of loneliness (84.7%); they did not want to cry (86.2%); did not feel the life was not worth it (96%). At the end, they said they felt satisfied with life in general (77.2%). the accidents suffered by the elderly are related to individual factors. These factors are related to working life and lack of structure of households and communities to meet the protection needs of the population that is increasingly aging in an active mode.