Comparison of the frailty scales in patients hospitalized at internal medicine clinics and determination of the relationship between frailty and life quality-falling risk

Background and aim: Frailty is one of the geriatric syndromes that gradually increases its importance all around the world. In recent years lots of scales have been generated to make the diagnosis of this syndrome. In our study, we aimed to determine the frailty in old patients hospitalized at internal medicine clinics according to different scales and to compare between them. We also tried to indicate the relationship between the frail and not frail patients and life quality and falling risk. Materials and Methods: We included into our study a number of 420 65 year-old and older patients hospitalized at Internal Medicine Clinics, Faculty of Medicine Gaziantep University. We performed participants CHS, WHAS, Gerontopole scales and SF-36 Life Quality Scale and Itaki Fall Risk Scale. We also searched the age, sex and the number of chronic diseases and used medications of patients. Results: Median age of participants was 71.9±6.3, sex ratio was %49.5 female and %50.5 male. The mean age of frail patients was higher than not frail patients. In our evaluation there was statistically significant difference between age and frail, prefrail and robust groups which are subgroups of frailty scales (p<0.001). Frailty was more frequent at female group than male group. There was statistically significant difference between sex and subgroups of frailty (p<0.05). We found the ratio of frail patient %65.5 at CHS, %63.1 at WHAS and %91.2 at Gerontopole. There was also statistically significant difference when we evaluated the subgroups of frailty scale amongst themselves (p<0.001). Lower life quality points were found in frail patients than not frail ones when we took a look at life qualities of patients. Statistically significant difference was also detected between life quality and subgroups of three scales (p<0.001). When we searched of the falling risk point, we found frail patients have more risky than the others. There was also significant difference between subgroups (p<0.001). Conclusions: Our study pointed out that frailty risk increases with older ages, multiple comorbid disorders and female gender. Furthermore frail patients had poorer quality of life and were more risky for falling than not frail ones. We think that patients' life quality can improve, less falling events can be reported and lower hospitalization ratios can be reached with an early detection or prevention of frailty in old ages. Keywords: Frailty, Quality of life, Risk of falling, Elderly