Identifying Frailty in Hospitalized Older Adults with Significant Coronary Artery Disease

Abstract

Gait speed frailty was the strongest predictor of mortality in a population with CAD and may add to traditional risk assessments when predicting outcomes in this population.

Frailty and Outcomes After Myocardial Infarction: Insights From the CONCORDANCE Registry

“…In addition to greater cardiac and noncardiac comorbidities, frail patients had greater deficits in cognition, mobility, and continence. Our findings demonstrating that frailty is not only associated with increased in‐hospital but also midterm all‐cause mortality and hospitalizations following MI are consistent with prior analyses 3, 4, 5, 6. Despite this higher risk, frail patients were managed less aggressively compared with their nonfrail counterparts.…”

“…However, in patients with significant cardiovascular disease, the prevalence may be as high as 60% 2. Frailty has been associated with increased major adverse cardiac events after myocardial infarction (MI) 3, 4, 5, 6. Mechanisms proposed for worse outcomes are likely multifactorial.…”

Current and Future Directions in Frailty Research

“…The concept of physical frailty has been studied extensively, which has led to the development of various approaches to measurement. These approaches range from single-dimension scales, such as the assessment of gait speed, 16 to multidimensional instruments such as the Physical Performance Battery (PPB), which includes gait speed as 1 of 3 measures of function. Gait speed has been shown to be a highly predictive marker of frailty, as it is strongly associated with the progressive disability that characterizes frailty syndrome; furthermore, gait speed has been shown to be almost as good of a predictor of disability as the PPB.…”

Maximum Strength Estimate of Quadriceps and Brachial Biceps Muscles in Patients with Chronic Heart Disease

“…While muscular impairment in cHF patients has been amply studied, there are limited case-reports on the strength characteristics of patients affected by other cardiovascular pathologies, such as caD without ventricular dysfunction [11][12][13] . Less attention has been directed also to the issue of post heart transplant (HT) functional capacity 14 .…”

“…Handgrip strength can predict long term mortality in patients with cHF 10 and 6-month mortality in population with coronary artery disease (caD) 11 . Other studies found that muscle strength in men without heart disease was inversely and independently associated with all-cause mortality 12,13 .…”