Prevalencia de trastornos podológicos y factores asociados en adultos mayores de los centros gerontológicos del cantón Cuenca, 2018

Abstract

Introduction: 6.5% of the total population in Ecuador are people over 65 years old, and it is expected that by 2020 it will be 7.4%. In this process there are several anatomical and physiological changes, being one of the most compromised structures, the foot. In spite of this, this pathology is not very valued and there are few referent studies. Objective: to determine the prevalence of podiatric disorders and associated factors in older adults of the gerontological centers of the canton of Cuenca. Methodology: a cross-sectional study in 136 older adults, who underwent a physical podiatric examination, once the inclusion criteria were met: adults over 65 years of age in the gerontological centers of the canton of Cuenca who signed the informed consent. The data were analyzed and processed in the SPSS version 15 program and descriptive statistics were used as frequency and percentage, measures of central tendency as average and dispersion measures as standard deviation. To search for statistical association, odds ratio (OR) was used with a 95% confidence index (CI) and chi square with its p value for statistical significance less than 0.05. Results: 136 older adults were studied, 59.6% were women, 34.6% were between 65 and 74 years old and 34.6% between 75 and 84 years old. 71.3% have resided in rural areas and 66.2% have primary education. 100% of the study population presented some type of podiatric injury and the dermatological pathology was the most prevalent with 97.1%, followed by biomechanical pathology with 80.1% and vascular and neuroperipheral pathology with 61.8 %. There was 2.3 times higher prevalence of vascular and neuroperipheral pathology in patients with high BMI; this association was significant (95% CI 1.026-5.306, p value <0.05). Conclusions: all older adults who participated in the study had at least one type of podiatric injury. The pathology of the dermatological type was the most prevalent and together with the vascular and neuroperipheral type were more common in the male sex while the biomechanical type was slightly higher in the female sex. Patients with a high body mass index have a higher risk of developing vascular and neuroperipheral pathologies