The association between frailty and quality of life among rural community-dwelling older adults in Kegalle district of Sri Lanka: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

The objective of this study was to estimate the cross-sectional association of frailty with overall and domain-specific quality of life (QoL) in rural community-dwelling older adults in Kegalle district of Sri Lanka. Methods A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted with 746 community-dwelling older adults aged ≥60 years living in the rural areas of Kegalle district of Sri Lanka in 2016. A three-stage probability sampling design was used to recruit participants. Frailty and QoL were assessed using the Fried phenotype and Older People's Quality of Life Questionnaire respectively. Multivariable linear regression was used to estimate the association of frailty with QoL after accounting for the complex sampling design. Results The median (IQR) age of the sample was 68 (64: 75) years and comprised of 56.7% women. 15.2% (95% CI: 12.4%, 18.7%) were frail and 48.5% (95% CI: 43.9%, 53.2%) were pre-frail. The unadjusted means (SE) of the total QoL score for the robust, pre-frail and frail groups were 139.2 (0.64), 131.8 (1.04) and 119.2 (1.35) respectively. After adjusting for covariates in the final multivariable model, the estimated difference in mean QoL were lower for both frail and pre-frail groups versus robust. The estimated reduction in the total QoL score was 7.3% for those frail and 2.1% for those pre-frail. All QoL domains apart from 'social relationships and participation', 'home and neighbourhood' and 'financial circumstances' were associated with frailty. Conclusions Frailty was associated with a small but significant lower quality of life in this rural Sri Lankan population, which appears largely explained by 'health' and 'independence, control 3 over life and freedom' QoL domains. Interventions aiming to improve quality of life in frail older adults should consider targeting these aspects.

Frailty Prevalence and Association with Health-Related Quality of Life Impairment among Rural Community-Dwelling Older Adults in Vietnam

“…After adjusting for covariates, we found that frailty contributed to a 10% reduction of HRQOL. Our results were higher than those of a study in Sri Lanka, which found that a 7.3% reduction of quality of life (QOL measured by the Older People’s Quality of Life Questionnaire) could be attributable to frailty conditions [27]. Another study in Italy using a similar instrument indicated that frailty reduced 6.4% of QOL in comparison to the non-frailty group [56].…”

“…Prior studies argued that the frailty rate in each community might vary, which depended on the definition, population, and settings [49,50,52]. Notably, our findings aligned with previous work that people having cognitive impairment, a history of multi-comorbidities, and falls were more vulnerable to frailty compared to those not having these conditions [3,10,27,42]. With such significantly high prevalence, it is suggested that older people in the community should be regularly screened for frailty to effectively prevent the adverse outcomes such as cardiovascular diseases, depression, fractures, or even deaths, which are consequences of frailty [2,3,4,5].…”

“…In literature, health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has been increasingly considered an important indicator for measuring the burden of frailty on the community’s health [27,28,29]. HRQOL is defined as “How well a person functions in their life and his or her perceived well-being in physical, mental, and social domains of health’’ [30].…”

Frailty and Quality Of Life in the Elderly Living in Nursing Home

“…In the study by Masel et al (21), a significant association was reported between the pre-fragility period, fragility period, and poor quality of life. In some studies, it was determined that there was a significant relationship between the quality of life and the fragility of the elderly (22,23). When data obtained from the present study are compared with those in the previous literature, the present results seem to be consistent with the literature.…”

Sleep quality, frailty and cognition in middle aged to older adults

“…Poor sleep quality would be counted as one of the symptoms by aging. Taken together, intervention of improving sleep quality is difficult in combination with improving the quality of life in adults (Jeste, 2019;Siriwardhana et al, 2019).…”