Beyond Physical Frailty-the Value of Lifestyle and Social Frailty Factors to Predict Mortality and Hospitalization in COPD.

Purpose: Lifestyle and social frailty factors are a new focus in the multidimensional concept of frailty, as recent reports have found strong associations with negative health outcomes. We searched for specific social and lifestyle frailty factors independently associated with 5-year survival and the risk of hospitalization in patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed questionnaire data from the National Emphysema Treatment Trial (NETT) and identified items related to the published definition of social frailty. Classification and Regression Tree, a machine learning method, was used to select variables most strongly associated with survival time or hospitalizations beyond 12 months of NETT study enrollment. Kaplan-Meier curves, log-rank tests, and Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine relationships between social/lifestyle variables and hospitalization and survival.

Results: Four social and lifestyle frailty factors were significantly related to survival (impaired lifting, bathing and dressing, in-store shopping, and loneliness). Two social and lifestyle frailty factors were significantly related to risk of hospitalization (emotional distress and difficulty performing work or activities). A combination of 6 questions provided clinical phenotypes that were robustly and independently associated with mortality risk and hospitalization with hazard ratios that ranged from 2.4 to 11.2 and 2.2 to 3.5 for survival and hospitalization, respectively, after adjustment for age, sex, disease severity, and physical frailty.

Conclusion: Lifestyle and social frailty factors that could be easily identified in practice may represent a novel approach to a multidimensional frailty assessment to predict survival and hospitalization in patients with severe COPD.