Validity of the Mini-Nutritional Assessment Scale for Evaluating Frailty Status in Older Adults.

OBJECTIVES: Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) may not be performed in clinical practice as it takes too much time and requires special training. The Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is widely used to assess nutritional status in older adults. We aimed to determine whether or not the MNA can estimate frailty status defined by the Fried criteria. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Six hundred two outpatients aged 65 years or older who underwent the CGA were included the study. MEASURES: Frailty status was defined by 5 dimensions including shrinking, exhaustion, low levels of activity, weakness, and slowness: 0 for robust, 1-2 for prefrail, and 3-5 for frail. MNA was performed in all participants even if their MNA-Short Form scores were ≥12. RESULTS: Of the 602 outpatients, of whom the mean age was 74.2 ± 8.2 years, 190 participants (31.6%) were considered frail and 218 (36.2%) prefrail. Internal consistency of the MNA had a Cronbach-alpha of 0.701. Interclass correlation coefficient for the test-retest reliability was found as 0.697. MNA with a cut-off point of 22.5 had a sensitivity of 72.1% and a specificity of 91.2% to detect frail participants. MNA with a cut-off point of 25.5 had a sensitivity of 66.9% and a specificity of 85.4% to detect prefrailty. For the estimation of frailty and prefrailty, the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve of MNA was 0.903 and 0.834, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: MNA can be a useful tool for frailty screening indicating that 2 common geriatric syndromes, malnutrition and frailty, can be identified by MNA simultaneously in clinical practice.

Heart Rate Recovery Is Impaired in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

OBJECTIVE: In this study we aimed to investigate heart rate recovery (HRR) in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). SUBJECTS AND METHODS: A total of 40 patients with IBD and 30 healthy controls were included in this study. A treadmill stress test was performed in all the patients to calculate the HRR index based on the age-specific maximum heart rate. The HRR indices were calculated as follows: HRR1, 2, 3, 4, 5 = heart rate at peak exercise - heart rate at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 min. The independent samples t test was used to compare HRR indices between the patient and control groups. The Pearson correlation coefficient was used to examine the association between the duration of IBD and the HRR indices. Multivariate regression analysis was carried out to identify predictors of impaired HRR in patients with IBD. RESULTS: HRR indices at various time intervals were significantly lower in the patients with IBD than in the controls: HRR1 (1.18 ± 8 vs. 31 ± 7, p < 0.001), HRR2 (36 ± 12 vs. 51 ± 8, p < 0.001), HRR3 (46 ± 12 vs. 62 ± 11, p < 0.001), HRR4 (54 ± 7 vs. 65 ± 8, p < 0.001), and HRR5 (55 ± 13 vs. 71 ± 15, p < 0.001). Mean duration of IBD was 7.8 ± 3.6 years. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between disease duration and HRR at the first minute (r = -0.704, p < 0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that symptom duration (OR: 1.742, 95% CI: 1.148-2.636, p = 0.009) was an independent predictor of impaired HRR in patients with IBD. CONCLUSION: In this study, the data showed that the HRR was impaired in patients with IBDs. Hence, given the prognostic value of the test, patients with IBD should be monitored for future cardiovascular events.