Examining the association of physical activity and mortality among recently hospitalized older adults with dementia

Introduction: This study aimed to examine the association between physical activity one month post discharge and mortality over the first-year post discharge among recently hospitalized older adults with dementia. Methods: For this descriptive sub-study, among 42 participants, we obtained physical activity data via accelerometry at one month post discharge and death status via phone call at 6 months and 1 year post discharge. We performed logistic regression. Results: We found that participants' amount of time spent in physical activity one month post hospital discharge was not statistically significantly associated with mortality within the first-year post hospital discharge (OR=.996, CI=.992,1.000; p=.053). However, we did observe a strong trend. Conclusions: Given the small sample of participants, this trend is salient and should be examined in a larger sample. The results highlight a specific patient profile, recently hospitalized older adults with dementia, that would greatly benefit from physical activity interventions. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)