| Summary: | 碩士 === 美和科技大學 === 護理系健康照護碩士班 === 107 === Background: Skeletal muscles decline with age; this occurs commonly in older adults, especially those who are frail. This study investigated the ratio of older adults with sarcopenia among those who lived in long-term care centers, and investigated the relationships of sarcopenia indicators with nutritional status and physical activities.
Methods: This study adopted a cross-sectional study design and selected 150 older adults from six long-term care centers in Kaohsiung and pingtung as the study participants; cases from Aug. 1, 2018 to Dec. 31, 2018 were obtained. This study employed the standard established Asian Working Group for Sarcopenia in 2014 to determine whether the participants were diagnosed with sarcopenia. The case data collected consisted of the participants’ demographic information, sarcopenia indicators, nutritional status, and physical activities, where their sarcopenia indicators included their limb muscle mass, hand grip strength, and 6-meter walking speed; their nutritional status entailed their body mass index (BMI); and their physical activities involved those measured by the activities of daily living (ADL) scale and those measured by the physical activity scale for the elderly, Chinese version (PASE-C).
Results: The 110 participants were aged 65–100 years, and their average age was 81.92; 78% of the participants were aged 75 years, and 73.3% were male; 66%) of the participants were diagnosed with hypertension, and 29.3% (44 participants) with diabetes. A total of 12% of the participants were underweight (BMI < 18.5), and 54% of them were listed as moderately or heavily dependent on their caregivers according to the ADL scores; most of the participants preferred performing static or mild activities. Approximately 62.71% of the participants were diagnosed with sarcopenia, while the prevalence of sarcopenia in female and male were 55% and 47.27%, respectively. A multiple regression analysis showed that women, those with osteoporosis, and those with low BMI had less skeletal muscles; women, those who were older, and those who had low BMI had weaker skeletal muscle strength than the other participants; and those with low ADL and/or PASE-C scores displayed poorer body functions than other participants.
Conclusion: In this study, 60% of the participants had sarcopenia, and the results showed that being female, osteoporosis, low BMI, increased age, low ADL scores, and low PASE-C scores were risk factors of sarcopenia. The study results can serve as references to relevant units when providing health care to older adults, thereby improving their health.
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