Prevalence of Frailty Syndrome and Chronic Diseases among the Elderly Population: A Hospital-based Study from a Tertiary Care Center

Abstract

Ab s t r Ac t Aim and objective: This study is aimed to evaluate the prevalence of chronic diseases and frailty which can inform the next generation of models to understand frailty as an emergent property in a complex adaptive system. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional observational study was planned to evaluate chronic diseases and frailty upon 200 patients of more than 60 years of age. Patients were evaluated for having frailty syndrome by frailty-defining criteria as defined by Fried and colleagues, along with the presence of some chronic diseases. Results: The mean age of patients was 71.61 ± 6.65 years and 76.5% of the study population were male. Weight loss, exhaustion, low physical activity, slowness, and reduced grip strength were seen among 40, 28, 11.5, 17.5, and 49.5% of the patients, respectively. It was observed that 78 (39.0%), 74 (37%), and 48 (24%) patients were in nonfrail, prefrail, and frailty group, respectively. Also, 73.5% of the total study population had at least one chronic disease and 33 (16.5%) patients had more than two chronic diseases. Chronic diseases were mostly present among the frail group. Conclusion: Frailty syndrome was very common among the elderly population in our study. Hypertension, diabetes, and osteoarthritis were the commonest comorbidities in the geriatric population of our study.