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Logo of bmcphBioMed Centralsearchsubmit a manuscriptregisterthis articleBMC Public Health
 
BMC Public Health. 2012; 12: 669.
Published online 2012 August 17. doi:  10.1186/1471-2458-12-669
PMCID: PMC3491042
Copyright ©2012 Dobson et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
Impact of behavioural risk factors on death within 10 years for women and men in their 70s: absolute risk charts
Annette Dobson,corresponding author1,9 Deirdre McLaughlin,1 Osvaldo Almeida,2,3,4 Wendy Brown,5 Julie Byles,6 Leon Flicker,2,7 Janni Leung,1 Derrick Lopez,2 Kieran McCaul,2 and Graeme J Hankey7,8
1The University of Queensland, School of Population Health, Herston, Australia
2Western Australian Centre for Health & Ageing, CMR, Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, Perth, Australia
3School of Psychiatry & Clinical Neurosciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
4Department of Psychiatry, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Australia
5The University of Queensland, School of Human Movement Studies, St Lucia, Australia
6The University of Newcastle, Centre for Gender, Health and Ageing, Newcastle, Australia
7School of Medicine and Pharmacology, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
8Stroke Unit, Department of Neurology, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Australia
9The University of Queensland, School of Population Health, Herston Road, Herston, Queensland 4006, Australia
corresponding authorCorresponding author.
Annette Dobson: a.dobson/at/sph.uq.edu.au; Deirdre McLaughlin: d.mclaughlin/at/sph.uq.edu.au; Osvaldo Almeida: osvaldo.almeida/at/uwa.edu.au; Wendy Brown: wbrown/at/hms.uq.edu.au; Julie Byles: julie.byles/at/newcastle.edu.au; Leon Flicker: leon.flicker/at/uwa.edu.au; Janni Leung: j.leung1/at/uq.edu.au; Derrick Lopez: derrick.lopez/at/uwa.edu.au; Kieran McCaul: kieran.mccaul/at/uwa.edu.au; Graeme J Hankey: gjhankey/at/cyllene.uwa.edu.au
Received December 7, 2011; Accepted August 9, 2012.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background
Estimates of the absolute risk of death based on the combined effects of sex, age and health behaviours are scarce for elderly people. The aim of this paper is to calculate population based estimates and display them using simple charts that may be useful communication tools for public health authorities, health care providers and policy makers.
Methods
Data were drawn from two concurrent prospective observational cohort studies of community-based older Australian women (N = 7,438) and men (N = 6,053) aged 71 to 79. The outcome measure was death within ten years. The predictor variables were: sex, age, smoking status, alcohol consumption, body mass index and physical activity.
Results
Patterns of risks were similar in men and women but absolute risk of death was between 9 percentage points higher in men (17 %) than in women (8 %) in the lowest risk group (aged 71–73 years, never smoked, overweight, physically active and consumed alcohol weekly) and 21 % higher in men (73-74 %) than women (51-52 %) in the highest risk group (aged 77–79 years, normal weight or obese, current smoker, physically inactive and drink alcohol less than weekly).
Conclusions
These absolute risk charts provide a tool for understanding the combined effects of behavioural risk factors for death among older people.
Keywords: Mortality, Risk factors, Men, Women
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