Prevalence of frailty in older adults of Ahmedabad

Frailty is a major syndrome associated with ageing. It results from cumulative decline across multiple physiological systems and causes vulnerability to adverse outcomes that carry an increased risk for poor health outcomes including falls, incident disability, hospitalization, and mortality. The present study evaluates the community-based prevalence of frailty and its association with various other factors. Two hundred sixteen community-dwelling older adults from different zones of the city of Ahmedabad were screened for frailty using Edmonton frail scale (EFS) and data was analyzed The study reported a prevalence of frailty of 31.8 percent in older adults. The prevalence of apparently vulnerable older adults was 40 percent. Frailty was also associated with age, gender, and number of chronic comorbidities (p< 0.05). On the basis of present findings, it may be concluded that frail older adults are at risk of having poor health consequences and so identification of such people is important for frailty prevention and treatment.