Fragilidad y su correlación con calidad de vida y utilización de los servicios de salud en personas mayores que viven en la comunidad

Abstract

Quality of life among frail older people Background: Frailty has a great impact in the wellbeing of older people. Aim: To evaluate the quality of life of older people with and without frailty. Material and Methods: We assessed sociodemographic variables, health, integral geriatric assessment, quality of life using the WHOQoL-BREF questionnaire and the level of fragility using the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) in 538 participants. Results: Three hundred and five participants aged 73 ± 7 years (229 women) were classified as fragile and 233 aged 72 ± 6 years (125 women) as not having frailty. Compared with their non-fragile counterparts, frail participants had a lower number of years attending school (5.9 and 7.4 respectively), a lower Barther index (93.6 and 98.3 respectively), a lower mini mental score (21.9 and 22.8 respectively) and a higher Yessavage depression score (2.0 and 0.8 respectively). Also, frail participants had a significantly lower total quality of life score and significantly lower scores in the physical and psychological domains. No differences were observed for the social and environmental domains. Older frail participants used health services more frequently than their non-fragile counterparts. Conclusions: In this sample, frailty was associated with a lower quality of life and worse scores in several geriatric assessment tools.

Implications of self-reported fragility on the quality of life of older adults: a cross-sectional study

“…There are no studies prior to ours that investigate these two variables with the same assessment instruments. Even so, these results corroborate studies that used other instruments such as the Edmonton Frailty Scale (EFE), Whoqol-Bref and Whoqol-old (16) ; Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) and Whoqol-Bref (4) ; Comprehensive Frailty Assessment Instrument (CFAI) and Whoqol-Bref (19) in addition to TFI and Whoqol-old (20) . This evidence reinforces that, regardless of the instrument used, frailty is always associated with reduced QoL in old age, found once again in this study, in which significant and negative coefficients were evidenced for all the tested relationships between frailty and QoL, with except for the weight loss component, which had no statistical significance.…”

“…Thus, a study (4) developed in Chile used the TFI instruments to assess frailty and the Whoqol-Bref to assess the QoL of 538 older adults, in which it was identified that frailty was associated with a lower QoL of participants and worse scores in various assessment instruments in geriatrics.…”

“…Frailty is defined as a dynamic and multidimensional phenomenon that involves physical, cognitive and social aspects (4) . It is a geriatric syndrome that has been widely studied in recent years, characterized by a reduction or deregulation of various physiological reserves (5) that interfere with the capacity for homeostatic adaptation (3) and lead the individual to a state of vulnerability to stressors (5) .…”

“…It is estimated that about one in 10 people over 65 years old and between ¼ and half of individuals over 85 years old present some degree of frailty (7) . The exact prevalence of this syndrome varies throughout the world, as it is influenced by several factors such as the definition adopted, type of sample and assessment instruments used (4) . Thus, according to a study (6) , the prevalence of frailty in Brazilian older adults varies between 6.7 and 74.1%.…”

Impacts of Sociodemographic Characteristics and Cardinal Health Problems on Health-Related Quality of Life among Korean Older Adults

“…As stated, the findings show that the impacts of sociodemographic characteristics on HRQoL in older adults tend to be similar in the East and West. These findings will also provide evidence that can be used to develop tailored measures for elderly Koreans who are vulnerable to low HRQoL [30].…”