Abstract des Autors

Loss of functioning and disability are frequent in old age and maintaining of functional abilities improves significantly quality of patient's life. Physical disability is easily accessible to intervention. However, no unique, standardized and generally recommended instrument exists for its evaluation. Newly developed Functional Geriatric Index (FGI) represents a new instrument for measurement of physical capacity of geriatric patient. Validation of FGI was performed comparing the correlation between Barthel ADL Index score and FGI, its 5 assessment areas and FGI and dependency level. All correlation coefficients were highly significant and prove the validity of information gathered in FGI. Further, the FGI was found useful in discriminating between dependency levels and identification of patient's needs for health and social care. We recommend FGI instrument for clinical use as part of comprehensive geriatric assessment of the elderly patient. Verf.-Referat