ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION Recovery From Disability Among Community-Dwelling Older Persons

DISABILITY IN BASIC ACTIVI-ties of daily living (ADLs) iscommon among commu-nity-dwelling older per-sons, with prevalence rates ranging from 7 % in those aged 65 to 74 years to 24 % in those aged 85 years or older.1 Although disability in older persons is often thought to be progressive or per-manent, previous research has shown that it is a dynamic process, with indi-viduals moving in and out of states of disability.2 Indeed, recovery rates as high as 28 % have been demonstrated in previous longitudinal studies of com-munity-dwelling older persons that have included assessment intervals of 12 to 24 months.1,3,4 More recent evi-dence has demonstrated that assess-ment intervals longer than 3 to 6 months lead to incomplete ascertain-ment of disability and that this incom-plete ascertainment is largely due to re-covery from disability.5 These results suggest that recovery may be consid-erably more common than previous studies have indicated. To set realistic goals and plan for ap-propriate care, disabled older persons, along with their families and clini-cians, need accurate information about the likelihood and time course of re-covery. Theobjectives of this studywere to determine the rate of and time to re-covery of independent function in com-munity-dwelling older personswho be-come newly disabled in their ADLs, to determine the duration of recovery, and to compare the likelihood of recovery among pertinent subgroups of older persons