Abstract

Introduction: In the last two decades, quality of life has become one of the most frequent areas of research interest in the scientific field of nursing. Urinary incontinence in the elderly population after the age of 65 is a serious nursing, medical, social and economic problem.

Objective: The aim of the study was to find out how the gender, age, education and housing of seniors influences subjective quality of life assessment in seniors with urinary incontinence.

Characteristics of the group and methodology: The core population of responders consisted of 400 respondents, of whom 64.5 % were women and 35.5 % of men aged between 65 and 85. The paper analyzed the results from research carried out in the Žilina Region, focusing on the quality of life of seniors with urinary incontinence. The research method was a questionnaire of own construction. NcSS 9, NCSS, LLC and the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis test were used from the set of statistical programs.

Results: The most common type of incontinence suffered by seniors was stress incontinence in the number of 24%, followed by urgent incontinence in total 22.3% of seniors. In the care of their problem with urinary incontinence, the general practitioner accounted for 46.3% of responses, followed by a urologist 25% of responses. In terms of subjective quality of life assessment, seniors most often reported that their quality of life is neither good nor bad 28% of responders. A total of 36.7% of seniors reported a good or very good quality of life, a bad or very bad 25.8% of seniors reported a good or very good quality of life. 89% of seniors were convinced that urinary incontinence had somehow affected their lives. The study confirmed a medium to substantial relationship for age and quality of life variables. In the case of the variable housing and gender, was a low to medium relationship confirmed. In the case of the variable education and quality of life, no relationship was confirmed.

Conclusion: Urinary incontinence in the senior population after the age of 65th year of life significantly affects the quality of life and has an impact on the overall deterioration of the health of the senior. It often results in the loss of social roles and the creation of social isolation in society. Urinary incontinence is a multidisciplinary problem. The interplay of the general practitioner, urologist, gerontologist, physiotherapist, nurses and family has an important role in its treatment, in terms of positively influencing the quality of life of a senior with urinary incontinence (Tab. 5, Ref. 15). Text in PDF www.lekarskyobzor.sk.

KEY WORDS: quality of life, urinary incontinence, senior.

Lek Obz 2022, 71 (10): 403-408

Ivica GULÁŠOVÁ 1,  Jozef BABEČKA 2

1 Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Fakulta zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce, Katedra ošetrovateľstva, Trnava, dekan prof. MUDr. J. Slaný, CSc.
2 Katolícka univerzita v Ružomberku, Fakulta zdravotníctva, Katedra ošetrovateľstva, Ružomberok, dekan prof. MUDr. A. Lacko, CSc.

CITE

GULÁŠOVÁ I.,  BABEČKA J.: Quality of life of seniors with urinary incontinence. Lek Obz 2022, 71 (10): 403-408