A influência dos fatores extrínsecos no risco de queda de idosos em ambientes domiciliares: um estudo à luz da arquitetura de interiores

Abstract

The aging of population has been object of concerns of researchers from different areas, especially because, in the last decades, there was a significant increase in the number of elderly people, both global perspective and Brazil. Concurrently with this growth, it is also occurring the increase in the number of falls, frequent in this part of the population, and the factors related to the physical environment appear as the most common cause in the falls of older people. Thus, the research seeks to identify which extrinsic factors to the individual and related to the physical environment of interior design contribute to the fall risk of older people in home environments. The study took place in the theoretical field from the survey of the state of the art and, in the practical field, with the target population, listing and categorizing the elements of the interior design present in domiciles. To carry out the empirical survey were selected, randomly, 95 elderly from the Centro de Convivência do Idoso Dona Itália Franco (Dona Itália Franco Community Center for the Elderly), in Juiz de Fora(MGBrazil)where techniques and instruments of Post-Occupancy Evaluation were used; at first, with interviews and then, with the walkthrough, combining observation of the housing environments visited with new interviews. The theoretical research data were complemented with the data from the empirical survey. Finally, the elements of the home built environment were systematically listed, through the elaboration of a diagram from the listed categories, showing the complexity of the interior design in the relation with the fall risk in the elderly population. As a product, the diagrams are presented with the elements of interior design identified in the study as intrinsic to the built environment and extrinsic to the individual, and that were presented as influencers of fall risk in elderly people in home environments, which are organized in two large groups: the edification categories and the interior space categories. At the end, the sight is to attract new looks and more critical focus to the inconsistencies present in the physical environment domiciled for the elderly. That categorization contribute to the comprehension and elucidation of the causal phenomena, allowing that way, the development of measures and effective preventive actions from the possibility of appropriation of content analyzed by part of the built environment planning sectors.