ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2018
Three Year Functional Trajectories Among Old Age Survivors and Decedents: Dying Eliminates a Racial Disparity.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Educational inequalities in disability at the end of life across European welfare regimes.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Appendicular Lean Mass, Grip Strength, and the Development of Hospital-Associated Activities of Daily Living Disability Among Older Adults in the Health ABC Study.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2022Article
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- Terminal decline in objective and self-reported measures of motor function before death: 10 year follow-up of Whitehall II cohort study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2021Article
- Article
- Capsule Commentary on Lunney et al., Three Year Functional Trajectories Among Old Age Survivors and Decedents: Dying Eliminates a Racial Disparity.Journal of general internal medicine · 2018Article
- Development and testing of a frailty-focused communication (FCOM) aid for older adults.Geriatric nursing (New York, N.Y.)Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundLong-term trajectories of disability comparing decedents and survivors and differences by race have not been assessed.
objectiveTo examine self-reported difficulty in walking a quarter mile and the need for assistance with activities of daily living (ADL) beginning 3 years before death among decedents and age- and gender-matched survivors.
designA case-control sample drawn from the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study (Health ABC). Data were collected between 1997 and 2015.
participantsOf the 1991 participants who died by the end of the study, 1410 were interviewed for 3 years prior to death, including an interview 6 months before dying. Of these, 1379 decedents were successfully matched by age and gender with 1379 survivors and tracked over the same 3-year period. MAIN MEASURES: Self-reported difficulty walking a quarter mile and the ability to perform activities of daily living without assistance (bathing, dressing, transferring). KEY
resultsDecedents (mean age at death, 84) increased in mobility disability from 44.1% 3 years before death to 69.4% 6 months before death and in ADL disability from 32.9% to 58.4%. Among survivors, mobility disability increased from 31.4% to 40.7% and ADL disability from 17.4% to 31.4%. The proportion of decedents and survivors with mobility disability differed significantly in adjusted models at all assessment points (p < 0.0001). African-American survivors were significantly more disabled than White survivors at all points (p < 0.0001), but trajectories of disability among decedents did not differ by race in the last 18 months of life (p = 0.35).
conclusionsTrajectories of self-reported disability differ between survivors and decedents. Older adults who died were more disabled 3 years before death and also had a greater risk of increasing disability over each subsequent 6-month assessment. The gap in disability between African Americans and Whites was erased in the final 1 to 1.5 years before death.
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