Investigation of Factors Related to Frailty Among the Older Adult in Khuzestan Province, 1398

Frailty syndrome is one of the most important aging syndromes that has a high psychological and financial cost for the elderly, families and health system. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the factors associated with Frailty in the older adult in Khuzestan province.

This is a cross-sectional study that was performed in 2019 on 540 older adult in Khuzestan province that selected by multistage random sampling. Data include demographic information, accumulated deficits frailty Index, Social Support Scale and the geriatric depression Scale. Data were analyzed by Spearman correlation, chi-square and sequential logistic regression statistical methods.

The mean age of the participating was 72.61 ± 8.72 years. In this study, 56% of the participants were women. Around 14/3% of the sample were frail elderly and 25.7 were pre-frail. Based on the findings in the bivariate analysis of frailty among older women, the elderly, people with lower education, people without social support, people with depression, the elderly alone, single, the elderly with a history of taking more than 5 drugs, with History of hospitalization and malnutrition and lack of social participation are more common (p< /001).Based on ordinal logistic regression, by controlling the simultaneous effect of variables, the level of frailty is significantly lower among male elderly, young elderly, elderly who take less than 5 items of medication, without hospitalization history, no depression and have higher social support had less frailty(p< /05).

The consequences of frailty syndrome can be reduced by early identification of young elderly at risk and appropriate intervention based on risk factors such as polypharmacy and low social support.