Comparison of life quality in older adults living in traditional family versus nursing home: a systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

To assess and compare the QoL of the older people dwelling in traditional family versus nursing home/institution. A comprehensive literature search was performed on 10 January 2018 to identify studies that investigated the QoL of older adults dwelling in family versus nursing home settings. Analyses were run using random-effects meta-analyses. A total of six cross-sectional studies with 1623 people were included. The quality of included studies was moderate. Meta-analysis showed that compared with nursing home support, the family support could significantly improve the physical health (6 studies, SMD = 0.50, 95%CI: 0.32–0.68, p < 0.05), mental status (6 studies, SMD = 0.45, 95%CI: 0.26–0.65, p < 0.05), and social relationship (5 studies, SMD = 0.51, 95%CI: 0.19–0.83, p < 0.05). Traditional family support model demonstrated a significant improvement in the physical health, psychological status and social relationships among older adults. The conclusions were driven by cross-sectional studies, Larger, adequately powered RCTs are required to confirm our finding.

KEYWORDS:

• Older adults
• tradition family support
• nursing home support
• quality of life
• meta-analysis

Acknowledgments

We thank all members of our study team for their whole-hearted cooperation and the original authors of the included studies for their wonderful work. We also thank Evidence-Based Medicine Center of Lanzhou University for methodological support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Available of data and materials

The datasets and any other materials of our study are available from corresponding author on request.

Authors’ contributions

YJC, KHY and XMH planned and designed the research; LG, XXL and KHY provided methodological support/advice; YJC and BP tested the feasibility of the study; YJC, ZTB, and BP extract data; YJC and LG performed the statistical analysis; YJC wrote the manuscript; YJC, XMH, XXL, XHY and KHY revised the manuscript; all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Ethics approval and participants consent are not required because this study is a meta-analysis based on the published studies.