Can Primary Care Change Elderly Physical Activity and Salt Intake? An Australian Pilot Trial (ECOBEING)

Health HQ

Status: Completed

Conditions: Health Behaviour

Treatments: Behavioral: Lifestyle counselling

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01693536

RO783

Details and patient eligibility

About

A randomised controlled trial to test if offering three visits to a dietician + two visits to a physiotherapist over six months + a home sphygmomanometer, will result in a reduction in sodium intake and an increase in fitness in people over 75yrs. Volunteers were enrolled from Oct 2008 to July 2009.

Full description

There is evidence that both sedentary lifestyle and high sodium diets contribute to cardiovascular disease and possibly dementia among the elderly. There is a need to show that minimal intervention can reduce sodium intake and increase fitness in the elderly. Finland has shown that five dietician visits/year could change diet in respect to fat and fibre. In Australia the National Health Insurer (Medicare) funds five allied health visits/year for those with chronic disease, hence our use of this model. This is consistent with WHO guidelines for a national approach using existing health infrastructure. The elderly (75-95yrs) were chosen as this group is thought most difficult to change behaviour and has a higher incidence of dementia.

Enrollment: 85 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 75 to 95 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Living independently
• Must be able to walk for six minutes

Exclusion criteria

• Dementia as defined by Standardised Mini-Mental State Examination score <25/30
• All patients of HealthHQ-Southport General Practice

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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85 participants in 2 patient groups

Lifestyle counselling

Experimental group

Description:

Three dietician visits focussed on education to find food with sodium less than 120mg/100gms. Two physiotherapist visits focussed on teaching personalised sustainable practical exercise.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Lifestyle counselling

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Control group was offered free skin cancer check and wait listed for the same lifestyle counselling after the six months of the study.