Phenotype of frailty: which items are more frequent in a group of community-dwelling elderly of Belo Horizonte?

• Author(s): Jardim,Cintia da Silva Freire ; Tomaz,Sheila Alves Gomes ; Silva,Vanessa Gomes da ; Silva,Silvia Lanziotti Azevedo da ; Dias,Rosângela Corrêa
• Date: 2012
• Origin: Oasisbr
• Subject(s): Aging, sarcopenic, gait, frail elderly.
• Document Type: Journal article
• Language: English

Description

OBJECTIVE: Frailty is characterized by increased vulnerability to stressors that results from decreased physiological reserves due to increased disability in multiple systems. This process, coupled with the decrease in the individual's ability to meet the demand imposed, culminating in the appearance of fragility. To identify, among the five items on the phenotype of frailty, which were more frequent in the investigation of Rede Fibra in Belo Horizonte- MG.
METHODS: This study is a subproject of Rede Fibra and used a random sample of 199 elderly from the database center of Belo Horizonte. This study was performed descriptive statistics for all study variables. For this, we used the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS), version 15.0.
RESULTS: The prevalence of frailty in our sample was 14%, and the most frequent item of the sample was running at low speed in both, the frail elderly (93.6%) as in the pre-frail (88.4%).
CONCLUSION: The low-speed running was most common among frail and pre-frail elderly. So, this should be an item that deserves careful observation by health professionals for better conditions to identify possible frailty in the elderly.