OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the quality of life of elderly patients in home care. METHOD: Analytical cross-sectional study. Elderly patients of a home care program were assessed regarding socio-demographic, clinical, functional data and quality of life by the WHOQOL-Bref. Elderly people with cognitive and/or severe hearing deficits were excluded from the study. The T-Student, ANOVA and Pearson's Correlation tests were used to investigate the association between the WHOQOL-Bref and the variables (α=0.05). RESULTS: The sample comprised 23 elderly patients, mostly female (69.6%), with mean age of 84.22±7.89 years. The number of comorbidities found was 7.13±2.32. The mean time of functional dependence was 3.48±2.5 years. The variables that presented significant association with the WHOQOL-Bref domains were: depressive symptoms (p<0.001), number of illnesses (p=0.037) and functional capacity (p=0.019) with the physical domain; age (p=0.015), functional capacity (p=0.004), number of drugs (p=0.037) and depressive symptoms (p=0.002) with the psychological domain; age (p=0.002), depressive symptoms (p=0.002), number of illnesses (p=0.010) with the environment domain; psychiatric affections (p=0.016) and functional capacity (p=0.001) with the social relationships domain; and pain complaint (p=0.002), analogical visual scale of pain (p=0.021), number of drugs (p=0.002) and depressive symptoms (p=0.050) with the overall domain ("overall"). CONCLUSION: Factors that negatively influence the QoL of elderly patients in HC are: young elderly, high intensity pain complaint, poly-pharmacotherapy, high number of illnesses, presence of depressive symptoms and other psychiatric affections, and functional deficit.
Caregivers; Aging; Sample Size; Health of the elderly; Frail elderly; Homebound persons
