Prevalence of cognitive impairment in elderly population residing in an urban area of Belagavi

Context: Cognitive impairment (CI) is emerging as an important health problem of the elderly population in India. As the impact of this illness at various levels is not well understood, so situation analysis is the need of the hour. Aims: (1) To know the prevalence of CI in elderly population residing in an urban area. (2) To assess the burden of health care among the care givers. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional study was carried out among 770 elderly aged ≥60 years residing in two Urban Health Centres of Belagavi District. Methods and Material: Socio-demographic profile of the participant was collected using a predesigned and pretested questionnaire by personal interview at the participants' residence. To assess the CI and burden of healthcare, Mini Mental State Examination and Zarit Caregiver Burden Scale were used, respectively. Statistical Analysis Used: IBM SPSS version 22 was used. Chi square test and Fisher's Exact test were applied. Results: The overall prevalence of CI was 8.4% in our study. The risk factors noted for CI were advancing age, female sex, unmarried or widow/widower, illiterate, not working presently, staying alone, and poverty. Out of 65 caregivers, 67.7% of them had mild or moderate burden of caring for the cognitively impaired elderly. Conclusions: It is important to assess older people for any CI, when planning geriatric health care. Priority must be given to the older age group and female, as they are more vulnerable to CI.