Respiratory symptoms in elderly may predict life expectancy

Respiratory symptoms like cough, wheeze can predict life expectancy in elderly person according to the latest research. Also, such predictions differ by whether the person is smoker or non-smoker.

It’s known that doctors and researchers can recognize the disease (respiratory disease) by the respiratory sign and symptoms presented by the patient. But they were curious whether these data can be translated to predict the life expectancy.

Researchers made study which was published online 02 July 2019 on Journal Respirology and found that it is possible to predict life expectancy in elderly person by studying the respiratory symptoms.

Let’s have an overview of this interesting yet useful research.

Research methodology

Researchers at Australia were curious about whether we can predict life expectancy in elderly person by reviewing and studying their respiratory symptoms.

Scientist selected 2087 number of an elderly person with 22 years of follow-up using data from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ALSA). They studied and analyzed symptoms of:

1. Cough,
2. Shortness of breath (SOB) and
3. Wheeze

The implied impact on LE was estimated using a parametric survival function.

Interestingly, there are other few research on elderly health you may read here: Postmenopausal women with more belly fat linked with heart disease and Mental health actually improves in seniors using social media.

Result

After analyzing the data scientist found that respiratory symptoms predict can mortality in older people with following result.

1. SOB (Shortness of Breath) predicted shorter life expectancy irrespective of smoking status.
2. Cough predicted shorter life expectancy in former smokers and
3. wheeze predicted shorter life expectancy in current smokers.

The estimated remaining life expectancy of a 70‐year‐old male never smoker with no symptoms was 16.6 years.

The years of life lost for a 70‐year‐old male current smoker with cough, SOB and wheeze compared to a never smoker with no symptoms was 4.93 years with only 2.99 years being attributed to their current smoking and the remainder to their respiratory symptoms.

Resource

1. Kate Petrie, Michael J. Abramson, Amanda J. Cross, Johnson George. Predicting life expectancy of older people using respiratory symptoms and smoking status: Data from the Australian Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Respirology, 2019; DOI: 10.1111/resp.13603