Frailty as a Predictor of Adverse Outcomes among Spanish Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Ascensión Doñate-Martínez, Tamara Alhambra-Borrás () and Estrella Durá-Ferrandis
Additional contact information
Ascensión Doñate-Martínez: Polibienestar Research Institute, University of Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Tamara Alhambra-Borrás: Polibienestar Research Institute, University of Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain
Estrella Durá-Ferrandis: Polibienestar Research Institute, University of Valencia, 46022 Valencia, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 19, 1-15

Abstract: Spain is one of the European countries with the oldest populations. The prevalence of frailty among Spanish older people ranges from 8.4 to 29.4% and currently, is one of the most relevant public health challenges. The Tilburg Frailty indicator (TFI) has been widely used in the community and in healthcare settings for assessing frailty. The objective of this study is to evaluate the predictive performance of the TFI for several adverse outcomes among Spanish community-dwelling older adults. The predictive performance was tested through linear regression analyses and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves. A total of 552 Spanish older adults composed the study sample. Participants were assessed at baseline and after 6 months. Main results showed that frailty was strongly and significantly correlated with disability, physical health, mental health and falls efficacy. The TFI score predicted most of these adverse outcomes. The ROC analyses confirmed the acceptable predictive performance of the total frailty. This study provides new evidence confirming that the TFI is a valid tool to predict several adverse outcomes in Spanish older adults, which may allow professionals to plan and activate health and social care resources to support frail patients’ needs.

Keywords: frailty; predictive performance; disability; falls; quality of life; use of healthcare resources (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12756/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/19/12756/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:19:p:12756-:d:934321

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().