The following is a summary of “Comprehensive, continuous, and compulsory monitoring of frailty in elderly,” published in the December 2023 issue of Primary Care by Deore, et al.
Frailty is a growing problem in society because more and more people are getting older and unable to handle stress and do everyday things. Comorbidities are often not noticed in older people because they don’t discuss them. Also, knowing how to do good interviews, doctors should also know how to use screening tools to look for problems with daily tasks, mental health, and signs of sadness.
For a study, researchers sought to use tools to measure the level of freedom or dependence and to group patients into groups based on the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) so that it can be recommended as a useful tool.
For the geriatric exam, 191 older people over the age of 65 were asked to take part. They used tools that measure how well people do in daily tasks and how smart they are. They used the prevalidated CFS to score frailty and divide patients into two groups: frail and not frail. Then, they compared the characteristics. The average age in the study was 69.54 years; 53.4% were men, and 46.6% were women. Both the Katz index and the Lawton score were above 5. The Global Deterioration Scale (GDS) score was 1.5, and the clinical frailty score was 3.55. A disproportionately large number of men were found in the weakness group.
The weak group had a lot more high blood pressure. For people who were weak, the mean Katz scores were a lot lower, and the mean GDS scores were a lot higher. The risk ratio for gender is 0.05 (CI-0.01-0.20), an important factor in determining weakness. There was a strong link between having a higher Lawton score and being weak, with odds ratios of 0.33 (CI: 0.21–0.52) for Lawton and 2.62 (CI: 1.14–6.02) for GDS. Men are weaker than women, and conditions like high blood pressure and coronary heart disease make them even more frail by causing cognitive decline and a loss of independence. An all-around look at the health of the old will be possible with a full test for weakness.
Source: journals.lww.com/jfmpc/fulltext/2023/12120/comprehensive,_continuous,_and_compulsory.30.aspx