Objectives
To identify smoking status of elderly and to assess socio-demographic and economic factors associated with them.
Methods
This is a quantitative, transversal, observational and analytical study with 980 elderly living in the urban area of the municipality of Uberaba (MG) – Brazil. The Mini Mental State Examination and the Brazilian Multidimensional Functional Assessment Questionnaire were used. The elderly were classified as smokers, ex-smokers and nonsmokers according to the Guidelines for Smoking Cessation. The statistical analysis were performed with SPSS-17 software. The smoking status of the elderly was described by means of simple and absolute frequencies. We employed the Cramer’s V (p ≤ 0.05) in the bivariate analyses and then test the Multiple Multinomial Logistic Regression (p ≤ 0.05) adjusted for sex and age according to smoking classification.
Results
We found 122 (12.4%) smokers, 320 (32.7%) ex-smokers, and 538 (54.9%) nonsmokers. The elderly smokers presented with 3.57, 2.36 and 1.82 greater chances of being male (p < 0.001), aged 60-69 years (p = 0.004) and single, divorced or widowed (p = 0.008), respectively. Elderly ex-smokers were also more likely (5.34) to be male (p < 0.001).
Conclusion
The results showed that sex, age and marital status are associated with smoking in the elderly population.
Aged; smoking; risk factors