Avaliação da fragilidade em idosos longevos por instrumentos diferentes

Abstract

The identification of elderly people at risk of frailty is a public health priority. There are several instruments capable of tracking and measuring frailty in the elderly, however, there is no consensus on the choice of the most appropriate instrument to be used by researchers and clinicians, because there is still no universal standard measure for frailty, especially in the oldest old. . In this context, the objectives of this dissertation were: (1) Compare the scores of the Clinical-Functional Vulnerability Index-20 (IVCF-20) and the Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) among elderly people aged 80 or over. (2) Develop a technical product in the format of an educational video for community-dwelling elderly people, encouraging healthy lifestyle habits. This is a cross-sectional study, nested within a population-based cohort, carried out with community-dwelling elderly people. Frailty was assessed using the IVCF-20 and EFS. Social, demographic and economic variables, as well as characteristics of morbidity and health-related care were also evaluated. The Pearson coefficient evaluated the correlation and the Kappa statistic analyzed the degree of agreement between the instruments. 92 community dwelling elderly people participated in this study. The predominant age group was 80 to 84 years old, which represented 58.7% of the study population. Characteristics of the sample highlight that 64.1% were female, 68.5% lived without a partner and 80.4% had up to four years of education. The prevalence of high risk of clinical-functional vulnerability, considered frail elderly, was 45.7% by IVCF-20 and the prevalence of frailty was 44.6% by EFS. The Pearson correlation coefficient was 0.759 (p<0.001), and the Kappa statistic was also 0.759 (p<0.001). It is concluded that the IVCF-20 and EFS instruments have a strong positive correlation and strong agreement. The identification of frailty was slightly better when using the IVCF-20. However, the result indicates that the instruments evaluated have a certain similarity in identifying frailty in community-dwelling elderly people. Furthermore, the educational video was disseminated through social networks and presented in a lecture given in the municipality of Santo Antônio do Jacinto - Minas Gerais, where 55 elderly people living in the municipality were present.