Discordance in Frailty Measures in Old Community Dwelling People with Multimorbidity - A Cross-Sectional Study.

Purpose: Assessment of frailty is a key method to identify older people in need of holistic care. However, agreement between different frailty instrument varies. Thus, groups classified as frail by different instruments are not completely overlapping. This study evaluated differences in sociodemographic factors, cognition, functional status, and quality of life between older persons with multimorbidity who were discordantly classified by five different frailty instruments, with focus on the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and Fried's Frailty Phenotype (FP). Participants and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study in a community-dwelling setting. Inclusion criteria were as follows: ≥75 years old, ≥3 visits to the emergency department the past 18 months, and ≥3 diagnoses according to ICD-10. 450 participants were included. Frailty was assessed by CFS, FP, Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB), Grip Strength and Walking Speed. Results: 385 participants had data on all frailty instruments. Prevalence of frailty ranged from 34% (CFS) to 75% (SPPB). Nine percent of participants were non-frail by all instruments, 20% were frail by all instruments and 71% had discordant frailty classifications. Those who were frail according to CFS but not by the other instruments had lower cognition and functional status. Those who were frail according to FP but not CFS were, to a larger extent, women, lived alone, had higher cognitive ability and functional status. Conclusion: The CFS might not identify physically frail women in older community-dwelling people with multimorbidity. They could thus be at risk of not be given the attention their frail condition need.

[Frailty]. / Skörhetsbegreppet viktigt för att förstå den äldre patientens behov.

Frailty is a concept that is better than multimorbidity at identifying older people in need of special multidimensional care. Frailty denotes a state of accelerated biological aging in which the body gradually loses the ability to handle physical, mental and social stress. It is a dynamic condition which can be partly prevented and treated with physical exercise, nutrition and appropriate medication.  They are many validated and simple screening tools for frailty. Some of these screening tools can assess the degree of frailty and thereby provide a risk stratification in for example a medical emergency. This can be used to support decisions to offer relevant medical intervention to chronologically old but biologically young people as well as to refrain from treatment in chronologically young but biologically older people.