Prevalence of comorbidities in frail, pre-frail and robust

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate comorbidities prevalence in frail, pre-frail, and robust older women. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample consisting of 63 elderly women aged 65 and over. Firstly, all volunteers were screened for frailty based on frailty phenotype. Then, they all underwent an anamnesis in which clinical conditions were autoreported. Comorbidities prevalence between participants was analyzed by the Chi-square test, with the number of occurrences and standard deviation presented. In all tests, the significance level adopted was ≤0.05. Results and discussion: In total, the sample consisted of 12 robust, 34 pre-frail and 17 frail elderly women aged 74±5.8, 75±6.5, and 78±7.8, respectively. Frail older women had a greater number of diseases and a higher prevalence of arthritis compared to robust elderly women. Frail and pre-frail older women had a higher prevalence of comorbidities compared to robust older women, with no differences between them. Furthermore, diabetes was the only condition with a higher prevalence in both frailty and pre-frailty compared to robust women. In frail and pre-frail women, there was no difference in the prevalence of comorbidities when taking into account the number of positive Fried phenotype criteria. Final Considerations: Frail and pre-frail older people have a higher prevalence of comorbidities in relation to robust elderly women and that the increase in comorbidities may possibly be involved with a higher incidence of pre-frailty, but not frailty.