RELATED FACTORS IN THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF DIABETIC ELDERLIES

Diabetes increases risk of incident or exacerbation geriatric syndromes in elderly and effect of different aspects of their life. This study was conducted to evaluate related factors in the quality of life of elderly diabetics.
This is a descriptive and analytic study that 88 elderly subjects with diabetes diabetic patients selected from 1400 cases in the age range 60-83 years have file in Kashan Diabetes Center in 2006. Samples were enrolled during about 2 months. Quality of life and a demographic questionaire were adminstered. The quality of life tool contained 41 questions that have been investigated in three dimensions: general (13-52 points), specificity (27-108 points) and overall (40-160 points). The relationship between QOL and other variables were analyzed by SPSS 16 using univariate and multivariate logistic regression models.
Overall, 65.9% of patients were female and 34.1% male. Results has showed that there are significant relationship beetwin tingling, numbness and vision loss with the general quality of life and treatment type, kidney failure, tingling, numbness, and limb numbness with the special quality of life.
Considering the low quality of life in the majority of elderly diabetics and its role in the development of diabetic complications, results express severe need to care of the elderly and reaffirm the role of care in improvement the health level of older adults.