Turkish Journal of
GERIATRICS

Hacettepe Ãœniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi, Fiziksel Tıp ve Rehabilitasyon Anabilim Dalı – Ankara With rapid increases in life expectancy and in the number of older people in the population, the number of older people living with disability is increasing. The number of disabled elderly persons is increasing not only as a function of population aging but also because of the increased use medical technology. The concept of disability is very dynamic and involves different types of disabilities. The term "Iceberg of disability" well illustrates the magnitude of the problems involved. Disability can also fluctuate over time, "once disabled" is not the same as "always disabled". Activities of daily living have become one of the important indicator of disability. The aim of this multicenter study is to evaluate the prevalance of disability, dependence in activities of daily living, assistive device use and chronic diseases in subjects aged over 60 years. Self reported disability rate was 33.2% among women and %29.4 among men. Life time disability rate was 4.1% in this study population. in activities of daily living, 46.8% of the women and 71.8% of the men were independent. Most common chronic diseases were hypertension, osteoarthritis, heart failure and diabetes mellitus. This is the first study aimed to evaluate the disability among elderly people in our country. Disability in the elderly is usually mild or moderate and to prevent disability must be the major concern of the clinicians. Keywords : Disability, Activities of daily living, Assistive devices, Elderly, Chronic diseases