Frailty and its impact on health-related quality of life: a cross-sectional study on elder community-dwelling preventive health service users.
BACKGROUND
The purpose of this study was to identify the incidence of frailty and to investigate the relationship between frailty status and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in the community-dwelling elderly population who utilize preventive health services.


METHODS
People aged 65 years and older who visited a medical center in Taipei City from March to August in 2011 for an annual routine check-up provided by the National Health Insurance were eligible. A total of 374 eligible elderly adults without cognitive impairment had a mean age of 74.6±6.3 years. Frailty status was determined according to the Fried frailty criteria. HRQoL was measured with Short Form-36 (SF-36). Multiple regression analyses examined the relationship between frailty status and the two summary scales of SF-36. Models were adjusted for the participants' sociodemographic and health status.


RESULTS
After adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related covariables, frailty was found to be more significantly associated (p<0.001) with lower scores on both physical and mental health-related quality of life summary scales compared with robustness. For the frailty phenotypes, slowness represented the major contributing factor in the physical component scale of SF-36, and exhaustion was the primary contributing factor in the mental component scale.


CONCLUSIONS
The status of frailty is closely associated with HRQoL in elderly Taiwanese preventive health service users. The impacts of frailty phenotypes on physical and mental aspects of HRQoL differ.
Department of Family and Community Medicine, Tri-Service General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan.
Yaw-Wen
YW
Chang
Wei-Liang
WL
Chen
Fu-Gong
FG
Lin
Wen-Hui
WH
Fang
Ming-Yung
MY
Yen
Chia-Chuan
CC
Hsieh
Tung-Wei
TW
Kao
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003153:Community Health Services; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D016330:Frail Elderly / Q000523:psychology*; D015577:Geriatric Assessment; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010641:Phenotype; D011314:Preventive Health Services; D011788:Quality of Life