The contribution of geriatric health examination services of national essential public health services to the detection of abnormal health conditions in the elderly and the awareness of examination results of the elderly has been rarely reported in the current studies.

To investigate the abnormal detection of several common diseases including abnormal blood pressure, abnormal blood glucose, overweight and obesity, anemia, fatty liver disease, gallstones or cholecystitis in the health examination of the older adults aged 65 years and above.

The older adults aged 65 years and above who visited 20 primary care institutions in 5 cities of 3 provinces in eastern, central and western China were selected as study subjects (excluding those with unclear health examination results in this year) from November to December 2019 by using a multi-stage stratified sampling method, and divided into the general older adults (without hypertension or diabetes), older adults with hypertension, older adults with diabetes. A one-on-one questionnaire survey was conducted on all respondents (The questionnaire included the general demographic characteristics of the respondents and the abnormal detection in the health examination of the elderly) .

Among 3 018 older adults, 2 033 (67.36%) reported abnormalities in the health examination. There were statistically significant differences in the abnormal detection rates of health examination for the older adults with different types of residence, population, and household registration (P<0.05). Among 3 018 older adults, 1 174 (38.90%) self-reported abnormal blood pressure detection, 747 (24.75%) self-reported abnormal blood glucose detection, 719 (23.82%) self-reported dyslipidemia detection, 445 (14.74%) self-reported fatty liver detection, 393 (13.02%) reported overweight and obesity detection, 238 (7.89%) reported gallstones or cholecystitis detection, and 60 (1.99%) reported anemia detection. Abnormal blood pressure was detected in 49.13% of the older adults diagnosed with hypertension during the annual health examination, with the blood pressure control rate of 50.87%. Abnormal blood glucose was detected in 60.48% of the older adults diagnosed with diabetes during health examination with the control rate of blood glucose of 39.52%. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that the detection rate of abnormal blood pressure was 2.57 times〔95%CI (2.01, 3.29) 〕 higher in the older adults with diabetes than in the general older adults; the detection rate of dyslipidemia was 1.64 times〔95%CI (1.29, 2.08) 〕 and 1.42 times〔95%CI (1.10, 1.84) 〕 higher in the older adults with hypertension and diabetes than in the general older adults, respectively; the detection rate of overweight and obesity was 2.79 times〔95%CI (1.94, 4.00) 〕 and 2.64 times〔95%CI (1.80, 3.87) 〕 higher in the older adults with hypertension and diabetes than in the general older adults, respectively; the detection rate of fatty liver was 2.10 times〔95%CI (1.55, 2.85) 〕 higher in the the older adults with hypertension than the general older adults; while the detection rate of anemia was 0.25 times〔95%CI (0.13, 0.47) 〕 and 0.47 times〔95%CI (0.25, 0.86) 〕 higher in the older adults with hypertension and diabetes than in the general older adults; the detection rate of dyslipidemia, gallstones or cholecystitis was 0.76〔95%CI (0.64, 0.90) 〕and 1.32〔95%CI (1.01, 1.73) 〕 times higher in the rural older adults than the urban older adults, respectively (P<0.05) .

The physical examination program for the elderly in the national essential public health services plays an important role in early detection and wareness of health problems.