Prevalence of Pre-frailty in a sample of Elderly in Geriatric Homes

Abstract

The continuous increase in the older population has generated interest towards many age-related comorbidities including prefrailty and frailty. Prefrailty identifies group of people in need of extra medical attention and at risk of high dependency which leads to increased health care costs as they are high users of community resources such as hospitalization and institutionalization. Frailty phenotype was identified by the presence of three or more of the following components of the hypothesized cycle of frailty: unintentional weight loss, poor endurance and exhaustion, slowness, weakness and low physical activity. Prefrailty is defined as having 1 or 2 of these components mentioned above. Both frailty and prefrailty have been demonstrated to be a significant predictor of nursing home placement which is mostly due to either disability or cognitive impairment leading to losing their independence. The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence of prefrailty among elderly in geriatric homes in Cairo.