This ethnography is aimed at describing the health care seeking behavior of elderly details in their socio-cultural context. The research question is “under what conditions did elderly informants decide to use certain professional health care services and how do they make use of all the available resources?”

10 sessions of fieldwork were conducted in the two agricultural villages between Sep. 1999 and Oct. 2002. The data for this paper came from participant observation with 14 informants. In the process of analysis I used proxemic and taxonomic techniques.

Informants decided to use a certain health care system according to their folk definition of illness. They prefer to use the health services where they felt more comfortable and free. They wished to be care from intuitive and holistic healers. Social network and having health resources was also important factor.

We need more comprehensive research model to reach a plausible explanation. Combined qualitative-quantitative research is needed to get practical data to develop effective health care systems for the elderly.

This study was conducted to examine and compare clinical manifestations and predicting factors for treatment-seeking delay among patients <65 and ≥65 yr with first-time acute coronary syndrome (ACS).

A total of 288 patients who were diagnosed with ACS were individually interviewed at C university hospital in G-city from November 2007 to December 2008.

Median pre-hospital delays for younger and older patients were 5 and 12 hr, respectively. Younger patients were more likely to be current smokers, heavy drinkers, obese, stressed, and have an unhealthy diet and family history, and to complain of chest pain, left shoulder and arm pain, perspiration, and nausea. Older patients were more likely to have hypertension and diabetes, and to complain syncope and dyspnea. Logistic regression analyses showed that after adjustment for age, gender and education, progressive onset of symptom and no attribution to cardiac problem significantly predicted pre-hospital delay >3 hr in both younger and older patients. Low perceived health status was a significant independent predictor in older patients only.

Health care providers should be concerned with different manifestations between younger and older adults, and educate people at risk for heart attack about symptoms and actions to get immediate help.