Comparison between different cut-off points in the classification of frailty profile in community-living elderly

• Autor(a) principal: Silva,Silvia Lanziotti Azevedo da
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Outros Autores: Silva,Vanessa Gomes da, Máximo,Leani Sousa, Dias,João Marcos Domingues, Dias,Rosangela Correa
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://ggaging.com/details/234
• topic: Frail elderly, phenotype, diagnose criteria.

<p><b>INTRODUCTION:</b> The diagnosis of frailty in complex and difficult. The phenotype of Fried is a tool used to classify the elderly according to his or her profile of frailty. Among its five items, the reduction of grip strength, level of physical activity and slow gait speed may suffer influence of anthropometric characteristics of the population.<br> <b>OBJECTIVE:</b> Compare the frequency of frailty using cutoff points of Fried <i>et al.</i> (2001) and others adjusted for this sample.<br> <b>METHODS:</b> 125 elderly community (70.4% women, average age 73.77 ± 5.65 years) were assessed by the Phenotype of Frailty. After application of the phenotype, the elderly were classified as frail, pre-frail and non-frail, initially using the cutoff points used by Fried <i>et al.</i> (2001) in CHS. After that, they were reclassified using cutoffs adjusted by samples percentil 20, for grip strength, physical activity level and slow gait speed. We analyzed the frequency of frailty in each classification and the comparison made by the chi-square test (X²), using &#945; = 0.05.<br> <b>RESULTS:</b> The distributions of frailty were distinct when used different cutoff points, but the pre-frail group was the biggest in both situations. The exhaustion criterion was score positive for 28% of the elderly in both classifications. There was no significant difference between the distributions according to X² test (p = 0.356).<br> <b>CONCLUSION:</b> There was not significant difference in the distribution of frailty using the two cutoff points proposed. Exhaustion criterion was frequent and does not change its cutoff point, justifying the result.</p>