Abstract
Objective
Comparison of frailty instruments in low-middle income countries, where the prevalence
of frailty may be higher, is scarce. In addition, less complex diagnostic tools for
frailty are important in these settings, especially in acutely ill patients, because
of limited time and economic resources. We aimed to compare the performance of 3 frailty
instruments for predicting adverse outcomes after 1 year of follow-up in older adults
with an acute event or a chronic decompensated disease.
Design
Prospective cohort study.
Setting
Geriatric day hospital (GDH) specializing in acute care.
Participants
A total of 534 patients (mean age 79.6 ± 8.4 years, 63% female, 64% white) admitted
to the GDH.
Measurements
Frailty was assessed using the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) criteria, the Study
of Osteoporotic Fracture (SOF) criteria, and the FRAIL (fatigue, resistance, ambulation,
illnesses, and loss of weight) questionnaire. Monthly phone contacts were performed
over the course of the first year to detect the following outcomes: incident disability,
hospitalization, fall, and death. Multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression
models were performed to evaluate the association of the outcomes with frailty as
defined by the 3 instruments. In addition, we compared the accuracy of these instruments
for predicting the outcomes.
Results
Prevalence of frailty ranged from 37% (using FRAIL) to 51% (using CHS). After 1 year
of follow-up, disability occurred in 33% of the sample, hospitalization in 40%, fall
in 44%, and death in 16%. Frailty, as defined by the 3 instruments was associated
with all outcomes, whereas prefrailty was associated with disability, using the SOF
and FRAIL instruments, and with hospitalization using the CHS and SOF instruments.
The accuracy of frailty to predict different outcomes was poor to moderate with area
under the curve varying from 0.57 (for fall, with frailty defined by SOF and FRAIL)
to 0.69 (for disability, with frailty defined by CHS).
Conclusions
In acutely ill patients from a low-middle income country GDH acute care unit, the
CHS, SOF, and FRAIL instruments showed similar performance in predicting adverse outcomes.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 27, 2017
Footnotes
SML and MJRA contributed equally to this study.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
