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Functional limitation in long standing illness and quality of life: evidence from a national survey

Quality of life is the most desired patient centred outcome of medical care.1 In older patients with long term illness, with no possible cure, it might be the only outcome achievable. Most clinicians are aware of the importance for quality of life of functional limitation, but lack an estimate of the size of its impact compared with long term illness in itself. We aimed to fill this gap in knowledge, using new data from a large national sample of older people in England.

Our participants were 9298 people aged 50 years or older with complete data on the relevant variables in wave 1 of the English longitudinal study of ageing, a follow-up of the appropriately aged respondents to the health surveys of England in 1998, 1999, and 2001.2

We measured long term illness and functional limitation …