Chronically Ill and Disabled

Chronically Ill and Disabled

INTRODUCTION

In medicine, chronic illness is a long-term illness, whose end can not be foreseen or clearly healing or never happen. There is no consensus about the period after which a disease considered chronic passes, but on average, every illness that lasts longer than six months may be considered chronic. Chronic diseases are not randomly distributed but are seen more frequently in certain individuals, families and communities. As always, poverty is one of the key determinants, with its attendant lack of formal education, loss of social and personal expectations and habits harmful to health.

Thesis Statement

The challenge of chronic diseases is not limited to any particular age and genetic group, such as the elderly, but it is related to a set of health problems in all kinds of age and genetic groups.

POPULATION IDENTIFICATION

The physiological and morphological changes that result of the aging process put people in a situation of fragility, which makes them more vulnerable. Therefore, coupled with the expected growth in the elderly population projected for the future, it should be noted that the increase in life expectancy leads to increased problems for the old one, as various diseases appear that affect more than one organ system, which has a significant impact on the use and consumption of drugs in this population. It should be noted that there are diseases of the elderly, although a number of them have a higher prevalence in this stage of life and its clinical expression is different from that of other age groups. The diseases that occur more frequently in this population are degenerative, infectious, autoimmune, and iatrogenic traumatic. In this sense, there are well-identified factors that are determinants of health in old age, such as gender and poverty. With regard to gender, several studies report that refers women poorer self-perceived health status and disease more than men and as a result, they are the ones that consume more drugs (Chang, Johnson, 2008).

Regarding poverty, the fact that the person who throughout his life was poor and continues to be faced in this stage of life health status deteriorated mainly due to the shortcomings he has faced throughout his life. Other studies have analyzed the characteristics of the health status of older adults. For example, a Chilean study revealed that 47.5% of the elderly suffering from a chronic disease: 51.9% of women and 41.3% of men. Also, in Extremadura (Spain) work was done with 960 elderly, which found that the average number of chronic diseases among respondents was 2.5, highlighting how prevalent chronic diseases hypertension and osteoarthritis (43.1% and 41%, respectively). Another work on chronic diseases, held in the same country, with 217 seniors, found an average of 1.8, which increases with age (1.3 in the group of 65-68 years to 2.2 in over 68 years), and disease most frequent were hypertension 40%, 24% musculoskeletal, cardiac 18.4%, cataract, glaucoma and diabetes mellitus 16.5% 14.3% 8 . In general, we can say that after 65 years, 78% of the population has a ...