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Biomedical subjects

S A Gaylord

Publications and source records attributed to S A Gaylord.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1994

The Timed Manual Performance test as a predictor of hospitalization and death in a community-based elderly population.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the usefulness of timed manual performance measurements (TMP) as predictors of health outcomes, hospitalization, and mortality in a large, heterogeneous sample of elderly people living in the community. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Central North Carolina. PARTICIPANTS: 1,286 community-dwelling older people. MEASUREMENTS: Demographic background, health problems, number of prescribed medications, perceived health, quality of life, and the TMP, a 27-item test that has been shown to predict functional dependency and need of health-care services in older people. RESULTS: During the 2-year follow-up period, 127 people died and 200 were hospitalized. Scores for those who were able to complete the original TMP, as well as scores for two shorter versions of the TMP, predicted mortality and, to a lesser extent, hospitalization within 2 years. For both original and shorter versions of the TMP, relative risk of death was approximately 2.5 times greater for those in the poorest performance quartile, as compared with the best performing quartile, when adjusted for age, gender, race, and number of prescribed medications. TMP tests and an index of IADL were independent predictors of death. CONCLUSIONS: TMP scores may be useful in the clinical setting as a vital sign of functioning, providing a means of targeting those individuals at increased risk of mortality.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1990

Timed manual performance in a community elderly population.

The extent of functional disability measured by performance of a series of simple manual tasks was determined in 1,286 elderly people, aged 66 to 98, who resided in central North Carolina. Missing data left 1,106 subjects for analysis. Poor manual performance was defined by either of two criteria: (1) inability to complete all the test items, or (2) taking longer than 350 seconds to complete the test. Using the first criterion, 113 persons (10.2%) were poor performers. When the two writing items were omitted from the analysis, 28 persons (2.4%) were in the poor performance group. Of the 993 persons who completed all items, 59 persons (5.9%) performed poorly. Using both criteria, the extent of functional disability was 16.1%; excluding the writing items, the extent of poor performance was 8.3%. Compared to those who performed well, those who performed poorly were older, poorer, less educated, more likely to be black, and less healthy. Because manual ability correlates highly with functional dependency and identifies those at risk for increased care needs, the magnitude of manual dysfunction noted in this survey has important implications for care providers and policy-makers.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed1975

Age differences in the speed of a spatial cognitive process.

Older subjects responded slower than younger subjects on a spatial task which required them to rotate mentally a perspectively drawn figure in order to judge whether it was congruent with a second figure. Decision time was partitioned into two components: (1) the time taken for the "mental rotation" process, (2) the time taken for the remaining processes such as stimulus encoding and motor output. Both components required more time in the elderly group. The increase with age in the component of decision time representing rotational processes was similar to those increases seen by other investigators examining age-dependent differences in time required for memory-scanning processes using verbal stimuli.

Adolescent↗