Hospital Acquired Depressive Symptoms in Frail Elderly Patients and Its Associations with Trace Elements

Abstract

railty is common in older adults, it is a biologic syndrome of decreased reserve and resistance to stressors, resulting from cumulative declines across multiple physiologic systems, and causing vulnerability to adverse outcomes including falls, hospitalization, disability, and death. Malnutrition of both macro and micronutrients has been identified as an important risk factor for the development and severity progression of frailty in older people. Malnutrition speeds lean body mass loss and decreases competence and therefore underlies declining grip strength, gait speed, and physical function in the frail older adult. The current study is a cross sectional study. Sampling was done from ASU geriatrics hospital, Egypt, 90 elderly inpatients were chosen as the study population to assess depressive and anxiety symptoms in hospitalized frail elderly and its associations with serum zinc level. They were subjected to comprehensive geriatric assessment with nutritional and mood assessment and factors related to it. In the current study the mean age is 71.8 ±7.8 years. Among the studied population 56.7% were females and 43.3% were males. There was significant relation between functional impairment and presence of depressive symptoms and anxiety in combination. The differences between both abnormal and otherwise or mixed cases were non-significant.