Prevalence of Frailty Syndrome in the Elderly and Associated Factors in Brazil

Anna Ferla Monteiro Silva Passos¹, Iris do Céu Clara Costa², Fábia Barbosa de Andrade³, Maria do Carmo Eulálio⁴, Anita Liberalesso Neri⁵, Rômulo Lustosa Pimenteira de Melo⁴, Adrianna Ribeiro Lacerda¹

¹Postgraduation Program in Health Sciences, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil.
²Department of Dentistry, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil.
³Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciencies of Trairi/Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Santa Cruz, Brazil.
⁴Department of Psychology, State University of Paraíba, Campina Grande, Brazil.
⁵Department of Educational Psychology, State University of Campinas, Campinas, Brazil.

DOI: 10.4236/health.2015.711172                

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the prevalence of frailty syndrome and its association with demographic, economic, health, psychological and functional variables in Brazilian population. The study was cross-sectional and composed of 385 elderly aged from 65 years, an average age of 73.92 years. A multivariate Poisson regression was used to check for conditions associated with frailty and to determine the prevalence (α = 0.05). The prevalence of frailty was 8.7% and pre-frailty of 50.4%. The frail and pre-frail older adults showed larger and increasing prevalence ratios for marital status, difficulty performing instrumental activities of daily living, old age, involuntary loss of feces, depression and negative affections. These results can guide the establishment of preventive measures and the development of intervention strategies aimed at minimizing the adverse effects of frailty in elderly people.

Keywords

Aging, Frail Elderly, Frailty, Frailty Syndrome

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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