日常生活動作(ADL)を用いた高齢者の機能評価

Various indices for evaluating achievement ability in activities of daily living (ADL) have been developed in previous studies. Many of them were designed for the dependent elderly, considering their functional level and disease characteristics. The availability of ADL assessment has now been expanded to the independent elderly, and ADL indices have also been used for screening in fitness tests. ADL assessment has been applied over a wide range of elderly, from the bedridden to the independent. However, it has not been sufficiently systematized as a way of assessing physical function in the elderly. Although the elderly population is conceptually classified into three groupsbedridden, partially dependent and independent-based on functional level, it is very difficult to evaluate the ADL ability of these different groups using the same activities because the range of their functional levels is too wide. In order to establish ADL assessment as a useful method for evaluating physical function in the elderly, an ADL index for each elderly group should first be developed. Then a unified ADL index that can be applied to all elderly, from the bedridden to the independent, should be developed. Finally, an ADL index that assumes a unidimensional scale based on the difficulty of ADL activities, may become available. This review examines the utility and availability of a unidimensional ADL scale as an assessment tool for evaluating the physical function of the elderly, considering the results of our previous studies