The effect of walking on quality of life of elderly people

Abstract

Background: The world is facing an ageing population. Physical inactivity is considered as the fourth leading risk factor for non-communicable diseases. Walking is recognized as an affordable exercise to elderly people. However there is rarely any systematic review conducted to examine the effect of walking on quality of life of elderly people

Objective: This systematic review of randomized controlled trials is to examine the effect of walking on quality of life (QoL) of older people.

Methods: Articles were searched through Medline and Ovid by using keywords of “elderly people”, “aged, 50 or more”, “old people”, “elderly”, “the aged”, “walk”, “walking”, “QoL” and “quality of life”. PICO criteria were used for the criteria in selecting articles for this review. CONSORT 2010 checklist was used to assess the quality of included studies.

Results and Discussion: 8 articles out of 237 articles from Medline and 883 articles from Ovid were included in this systematic review after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies were from 4 different countries. Average age of the subjects was above 60. Subjects were randomized to intervention (walking) and control groups. Outcome measures were QoL indicators. There was significant improvement in various QoL dimensions while other studies have results of either no significant difference between intervention and control groups, or results favoring the control group. Subjects’ adherence was high in the initial phase, yet it was doubtful whether subjects could maintain the habit without the assistance of experimenter and the assisting measures.

Conclusions: From this systematic review, the effect of walking on quality of life on elderly people is still unclear. More large scale research works, especially randomized controlled trials are needed to examine the effect of walking on elderly people.