Institutional care at the age of 79 in an urban population--an analysis from a longitudinal population study.

The need of institutional care is strongly correlated to age. In the population, that is between 70 and 79 years of age the proportion of patients in long-term medical care units increases twenty-fold. The present investigation is a part of the longitudinal population study of 70-year-olds who have been followed to 79 years of age in Göteborg. A representative sample of 79-year-old men and women has been investigated. At this age 8.7 per cent of the men and 8.3 per cent of the women were living in medical and social institutions. Institutionalization was defined as constant care outside the patient's home for at least three successive months at the time of the investigation. The percentage of men living in somatic long-term medical care facilities was 4.3, while for women it was 2.4. The corresponding figures for psychiatric long-term care were 1.9 per cent for men and 1.8 per cent for women. 1.9 per cent of the men and 3.7 per cent of the women had moved to old people's homes where the subjects are expected to manage their own daily activities. Among the institutionalized probands only 7 per cent of the women were married, while this was the case for 43 per cent of the men. The subjects in psychiatric long-term care had the longest nursing time, i.e. about 20 years, while in the other types of institutions this time was about 3 years. The longitudinal strategy makes it possible to describe age-related changes in the background factors behind institutionalization.