Turkish Journal of Geriatrics 1999 , Vol 2, Issue 2
The PREVALENCE of the DIAGNOSIS of ELDERLY PEOPLE ATTENDING to the PHYSICAL MEDICINE and REHABILITATION CLINICS
Ümit SEÇKİN, Pınar BORMAN, Hatice BODUR
Ankara Numune Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi, Fizik Tedavi ve Rehabilitasyon Kliniği-Ankara As there is not an available data about the prevalence of musculoskeletal diseases in our country, we decided to investigate retrospectively the prevalence and diagnosis of geriatric patients who were visited the outpatient clinics of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in one year period between January 1st 1998 and December 31st 1998. The diagnostic data were grouped as disorders of musculoskeletal system. We included 1560 geriatric patients (1026 women and 534 men) with a mean age of 69.4±15.7 years. in conclusion, the number of female patients was higher than the number of male subjects. According to the data about ages, 76.4% of the patients were between 65-70 years of age. The most common diagnosis were gonarthrosis (33%), generalized osteoarthritis (19.9%), degenerative joint disease and osteoporosis (14%) among the patients with a less diagnosis of inflammatory joint diseases and others. Keywords : Geriatrics, musculoskeletal system diseases, prevalence