"If we can keep the at-risk elderly functioning and active," said Eli Feldman, president and chief executive of Elderplan, an agency of the Metropolitan Jewish Health System, "we can focus on their medical problems and delay institutionalization on average by about two years.
The TAI is an instrument for the measurement of elderly function, and is composed of four scales representing mobility, eating, toileting, and mental status [ 11, 12].
Eighteen non-professional district welfare commissioners recorded information pertinent to elderly function in the four above-mentioned domains using the TAI.
These scales divided functional performance into five stages according to four ICF codes, making the measurements simple and less time-consuming and enable clear descriptions of elderly functioning level.
Level 5 of elderly function in each scale represents no disability and was scored as 0. At level 4, the elder has one functional problem, for example in TAI mobility, in climbing stairs, and is assigned a score of 1; at level 3, the score is 2, and so on.
Because of the variability of health effects resulting from exposure to environmental agents in the elderly, individual functions should be viewed in the context of genetics, health status, nutrition, occupation, and socioeconomic status.
Therefore, elderly often function at the limit of their capacity in order to fulfill the activities of daily living [ 2].
In fact, IADL actually improved at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months compared to baseline, which goes against the natural history of an elderly's function over time.
This study is part of the larger project "Aging Maintaining Functions: elderly in the 2020s" run by the Department of Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy, School of Medicine, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
11, 12 Most previous studies however, have targeted generally healthy, higher functioning elderly of less advanced age making comparison with our functionally limited, older group difficult.
