Correlation between frailty status and anticoagulation therapy in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation

Abstract

Objective To investigate the correlation between frailty status and anticoagulation therapy in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation. Methods A total of 131 atrial fibrillation inpatients in our hospital aged 70 years and over with a mean age of(77.4±6.4)years were enrolled from January 2017 to June 2018 in this retrospective study.According to the state of anticoagulation therapy at discharge, patients were divided into the anticoagulation group(n=67)and the non-anticoagulation group(n=64). Data including gender, age, N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide(NT-proBNP), glomerular filtration rate(eGFR), the type of medication, HAS-BLED(Hypertension, abnormal renal/liver function, stroke, bleeding history or predisposition, labile international normalized ratio, elderly, drugs/alcohol concomitantly), CHA2DS2-VASc scores, Charlson comorbidity index and clinical frailty scores(CFS)were recorded and compared between the two groups.Spearman correlation was used to analyze the correlation between frailty degrees and program of anticoagulant therapy.Two-class Logistic regression models were used to analyze the related factors for programs of anticoagulant therapy. Results The incidence of the frailty syndrome was 56.49% in 131 elderly patients with atrial fibrillation.Compared with the anticoagulation group, non-anticoagulation group showed that the CFS score[(5.73±1.85)vs.(3.69±2.07), P 0.05). The correlation analysis showed that there was a negative correlation between the application of anticoagulants and CFS grade in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation(r=-0.138, P<0.05). Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that age, CFS score and the incidence of frailty state were risk factors in elderly atrial fibrillation patients without the anticoagulant therapy(P<0.05). Conclusions The incidence of frailty state in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation is high, and the proportion of patients receiving the anticoagulant therapy is low.Age and frailty may be the most important influencing factors for anticoagulant therapy.Therefore, it is of great significance to incorporate frailty assessment into the management of anticoagulant therapy in elderly patients with atrial fibrillation. Key words: Frailty; Atrial fibrillation; Anticoagulation