Romero-Ortuno R, Soraghan C
BMJ Open 2014;4:e006645
Publication date: December 23, 2014
Summary
The objective of the present study was to create and validate a frailty assessment tool for community-dwelling adults aged ≥75 years. It is a Longitudinal, population-based study from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) including 4001 women and 3057 men aged ≥75 years from the second wave of SHARE.
A total of 3325 women and 2587 men had complete information. After adjusting for baseline age, comorbidity and basic activities of daily living (BADL) disability, the frail had an odds ratio for 2-year mortality of 2.2 (95% CI, 1.2 to 3.8) in women and 4.2 (2.6 to 6.8) in men. The mortality prediction of SHARE-FI75+ was similar to that of the other SHARE frailty scales. By wave 4, 49% of frail women (78 of 159) had at least one more limitation with BADL (compared with 18% of non-frail, 125 of 684; p<0.001); in men, these proportions were 39% (26 of 66) and 18% (110 of 621), respectively (p<0.001). A calculator is supplied for point-of-care use, which automatically replicates the frailty classification for any given measurements.
In conclusion, SHARE-FI75+ could help frailty case finding in primary care and provide a focus for personalized community interventions.