Prevalence and correlates of dizziness in community-dwelling older people: a cross sectional population based study

BMC Geriatrics

Research Article

Eduardo Ferriolli¹  Wuber Jefferson de Souza Soares²  Suzana Albuquerque de Moraes²  Monica Rodrigues Perracini³ 

[1] Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, Brazil;Physical Therapy Department, City of Sao Paulo University, Sao Paulo, Brazil;Physical Therapy Department, City of Sao Paulo University, Sao Paulo, Brazil;Faculty of Medicine, State University of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil;Visiting Research Fellow at Sydney University and The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney, Australia;

关键词: Aged;    Depression;    Dizziness;    Elderly adults;    Fatigue;    Sleep disorders by excessive drowsiness;    Cross sectional study;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2318-13-4

 received in 2012-07-04, accepted in 2012-12-06,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDizziness is a common complaint among older adults and has been linked to a wide range of health conditions, psychological and social characteristics in this population. However a profile of dizziness is still uncertain which hampers clinical decision-making. We therefore sought to explore the relationship between dizziness and a comprehensive range of demographic data, diseases, health and geriatric conditions, and geriatric syndromes in a representative sample of community-dwelling older people.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional, population-based study derived from FIBRA (Network for the Study of Frailty in Brazilian Elderly Adults), with 391 elderly adults, both men and women, aged 65 years and older. Elderly participants living at home in an urban area were enrolled through a process of random cluster sampling of census regions. The outcome variable was the self-report of dizziness in the last year. Several feelings of dizziness were investigated including vertigo, spinning, light or heavy headedness, floating, fuzziness, giddiness and instability. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to estimate the adjusted odds ratios and build the probability model for dizziness.ResultsThe complaint of dizziness was reported by 45% of elderly adults, from which 71.6% were women (p=0.004). The multivariate regression analysis revealed that dizziness is associated with depressive symptoms (OR = 2.08; 95% CI 1.29–3.35), perceived fatigue (OR = 1.93; 95% CI 1.21-3.10), recurring falls (OR = 2.01; 95% CI 1.11-3.62) and excessive drowsiness (OR = 1.91; 95% CI 1.11–3.29). The discrimination of the final model was AUC = 0.673 (95% CI 0.619-0.727) (p< 0.001).ConclusionsThe prevalence of dizziness in community-dwelling elderly adults is substantial. It is associated with other common geriatric conditions usually neglected in elderly adults, such as fatigue and drowsiness, supporting its possible multifactorial manifestation. Our findings demonstrate the need to expand the design in future studies, aiming to estimate risk and identify possible causal relations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Moraes et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.