Demand of health services among Chinese elderly aged 60 years and over: a meta-analysis

Objective To explore the status quo of demand for health service among the elderly aged≥60 years in China and to provide references for making health care policies and developing health care programs by relevant governmental agencies.Methods Literatures about the demand of health service among Chinese elderly published between February 2003 through December 2014 were retrieved via Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI),Wanfang Data,VIP Database,and PubMed database;supplementary manual retrieval and retrospective literature review were also performed.Stata 12.0 was adopted in the meta-analysis.Results This study included 24 researches involving a total of 39 000 participants.The results of meta-analysis on the retrieved studies showed that the overall two-week disease prevalence rate was 35.8% (95% confidence interval95%CI:30.2%-41.4%)and the overall prevalence of chronic diseases was 52.7%(95%CI:41.9%-63.4%)for the Chinese elderly aged≥60 years.The results of subgroup analysis revealed that among the urban and rural elderly,the two-week disease prevalence rate were 30.8%(95%CI:22.5%-39.1%)and 43.8%(95%CI:35.6%-52.1%),and the prevalence of chronic diseases were 53.3%(95%CI:26.4%-80.3%)and 53.3%(95%CI:45.8%-60.8%);the two-week disease prevalence rate for the elderly living in eastern,central,and western region of China were 34.2%(95%CI:21.9%-46.5%),30.3%(95%CI:16.7%-43.9%),and 37.9%(95%CI:34.3%-41.5%)and the prevalence of chronic diseases were 61.9%(95%CI:43.0%-80.7%),41.7%(95%CI:7.5%-76.0%),and 51.1%(95%CI=44.5%-57.7%),respectively.No publication bias was observed for the literatures included in the meta-analysis based on the results of Egger regression analysis.Conclusion The demand of health care service is high among Chinese elderly aged 60 years and above and the prevention and control of chronic diseases is the main task of health care for the elderly.