Role of frailty on cardiac rehabilitation in hospitalized older patients.

BACKGROUND: Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality, morbidity, and disability in the world, especially in the older adults. A relevant proportion of patients admitted to Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) may suffer from frailty, a complex geriatric syndrome with multifactorial aetiology. AIMS: The hypothesis underlying the study is that frailty complicates the management of older patients undergoing CR. The main objective is, therefore, to determine the relationship between frailty and CR outcomes in hospitalized older adults. METHODS: The participants have been recruited among patients aged ≥ 65 years admitted at the hospital for CR. A Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA)-based Frailty Index (FI) was created following a standard procedure. The outcome was measured as the ratio between 6-min walk test (6MWT) distance at the end of CR and normal predicted values for a healthy adult of same age and gender, according to reference equations. RESULTS: The study population consisted of 559 elderly patients, 387 males (69.2%), with age of 72 (69-76) years. The most frequent diagnosis at admission was ischaemic heart disease (231, 41.5%) and overall 6MWT ratio was 0.62 ± 0.21. At the multivariable regression analysis, gender, diagnosis and FI were significantly and independently associated with 6MWT ratio (p ≤ 0.0001, p ≤ 0.001 and p ≤ 0.0001, respectively), while no significant association emerged for age. CONCLUSION: FI resulted independently correlated to 6MWT ratio in a population of older patients undergoing in-hospital CR programs. Frailty is a multifactorial geriatric syndrome whose assessment is essential for prognostic evaluation of older patients, also in CR clinical setting.

Protective effect of physical activity on mortality in older adults with advanced chronic heart failure: A prospective observational study.

OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect on mortality of self-reported physical activity evaluated by the physical activity scale for the elderly (PASE) in elderly patients with advanced heart failure enrolled in a cardiac rehabilitation unit after heart failure decompensation (NYHA class IIIB). METHODS: The study prospectively enrolled 314 elderly patients (≥65 years) with heart failure in NYHA class IIIB (symptomatic with a recent history of dyspnoea at rest) consecutively admitted to cardiac rehabilitation between January 2010 and July 2011. Comprehensive geriatric assessment was performed. Physical activity was evaluated by PASE and stratified in tertiles (0-15, 16-75 and >75). Mortality was collected from September to October 2015 in 300 patients. RESULTS: The mean age was 74.5 ± 6.1 (range 65-89); 74.7% were men, 132 patients (44.0%) died during the follow-up (44.1 ± 20.7 months). Univariate analysis shows that physical activity level conducted before heart failure decompensation was inversely related to mortality (from 76.0% to 8.2%, P = 0.000). Multivariate analysis confirms that the PASE score predicts mortality independently of several demographic and clinical variables (hazard rate 0.987, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.980-0.994, P = 0.000). Notably, when considering PASE 0-15 versus 16-75 score and PASE 0-15 versus > 75 score, the hazard rate is 4.06 (95% CI 1.67-9.84, P < 0.001) and 7.25 (95% CI 2.7-19.5, P < 0.001), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Physical activity level evaluated by the PASE score is inversely related to mortality in elderly patients with advanced heart failure confirming the reduction of mortality exerted by moderate physical activity in such patients.