As we demonstrated previously in an elderly population, the cutoff values of 250 pg ml-1 for BNP and 1,500 pg ml-1 for NT-proBNP were used in the analysis [ 16].
With the increase in life expectancy, an age of 75 years has been used as a cutoff for "elderly" in several studies.
25 The main outcomes did not change even if we took the cutoff for elderly as 65 years in the Kaplan Meier survival and Cox analyses; there was still no difference between the non-elderly and elderly patients (22.4% vs 29%, log-rank χ=3.247, P=0.072).
The definition of an elderly patient has included cutoffs ages of 60 [ 21], 70 [ 22], 75 [ 23] and even 80 years [ 24, 25].
For example, a CES-D validation study in Hong Kong involving 398 elderly individuals reported an optimal cutoff value of 22 (75%% sensitivity and 51%% specificity), while the conventional cutoff value of 16 had high sensitivity (92 %) but poor specificity (30%%) in detecting depression [ 12].
PBF values were distributed according to the recommendations of Gallagher et al 24 classification, assuming the following cutoff points for elderly women: normal, 25.0%–37.9%, overweight, 38.0%–42.9%, obese, ≥43.0%.
This instrument has, however, been validated in the elderly general population, with a cutoff point of 16, which corresponds to clinically significant levels of depressive symptomatology and warrants clinical intervention (13).
The tool giving the best combination of sensitivity/specificity for depression screening among elderly patients was the GDS (cutoff score ≥10), with a sensitivity of 0.94 and a specificity of 0.80 as compared to DSM (Table 3).
29 We have chosen to use the age of 65 years as a cutoff for the elderly participants in our study because it coincides with the retirement age in Romania and is accepted by WHO as the age that defines elderly individuals.
For example, the poverty cutoff for a single elderly person in 1987 was $5,447.
