Agreement between six frailty assessment tools in Colombian seniors: SABE Colombia
Abstract
Introduction. Frailty is a clinical predictor of adverse outcomes in seniors. Multiple tools have been designed to help health care personnel screen, diagnose and monitor this condition. This study evaluated the level of agreement between 6 frailty assessment tools. Methodology. A secondary cross-sectional survey of the SABE Colombia population-based study. The prevalence of frailty was assessed according to 6 tools: FRAIL, Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF); gait speed (GS); Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB); Modified Frailty Index (mFI), and Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS). McNemar's test was used to compare the proportions of tool scores, and Cohen's kappa coefficient was used to assess agreement. Results. In the overall sample, the prevalence of frailty varied between 9.1% and 62.7%. The lowest prevalence was in FRAIL, while the highest was in gait speed. From the simultaneous assessment of 2,336 seniors, only two medium agreements were observed in the 6 tools (SOF vs GS, κ=0.21 p<0.001; and FRAIL vs CFS κ=0.27 p<0.001), as well as one moderate agreement (SOF vs SPPB, κ=0.54 p<0.001). Discussion. The variation in prevalence was expansive between the tools, and little agreement was observed between them, even those with the same focus (physical frailty, FRAIL and SOF and physical performance, GS and SPPB). Conclusions. This study’s findings suggest that most of the studied tools actually assess different aspects of frailty and do not have a medium or moderate level of agreement.
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Funding data
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Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Grant numbers Resolución 03/2017
