Calculating medical risk can be an inexact science, especially for older adults, that is those over 50, with many factors from the environment to chronic diseases helping determine how long a person lives.
Now, a team at University of California, San Francisco headed by Prof. Marisa Cruz has developed a tool that can help determine _ and perhaps influence _ senior citizens’ 10-year survivability rates.
A simple checklist helps doctors assess health risks that influence the longevity of older adults, and according to the authors, could be an opportunity for seniors to really engage with their primary care provider in having informed discussions about their health care maintenance.
The UCSF team created a 12-item “mortality index” based on data of more than 20,000 adults over the age of 50 from 1998 until 2008, from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally-representative sample of independently living U.S. adults. The point system was based on their risk factors and survival rate at the end of 10 years.
Their findings were published March 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Calculating medical risk can be an inexact science, especially for older adults. Many factors from environmental to chronic diseases can help determine how long a person lives.
“The most important thing we found was the risk factors that go into estimating shorter intermediate survival are very similar to risk factors that go into estimating the likelihood of longer-term survival,” said first author Cruz, MD, a clinical fellow with the UCSF School of Medicine.
“We also found that building a tool that clinicians can use to estimate that likelihood of longer-term survival requires considering many different types of risk factors.
“Not one particular risk factor tells you whether or not you are likely to survive but a host of attributes about your life and your medical conditions will give you a clearer picture,” she said.