Floor Maze Test is capable of differentiating spatial navigation between frail and pre-frail institutionalized older persons.

Investigation of the association between physical frailty and cognitive performance through spatial navigation is important to enable the identification of individuals with cognitive impairment and physical comorbidity.

Objective: To analyze the association between spatial navigation and frailty in frail and pre-frail institutionalized older adults.

Methods: Forty older people of both sexes, aged 60 years or over, residing in four Brazilian Long-Term Care Facilities (LTCFs) participated in this study. The following tests were applied: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), 2.44m Timed Up and Go, Floor Maze Test (FMT), and Fried's frailty criteria. For data analysis, the Mann-Whitney and independent t-tests were used to compare the groups (frail x pre-frail), principal component analysis was used to explore the main variables related to the data variance, and binary logistic regression to estimate associations.

Results: There was a significant difference in performance in the FMT immediate maze time (IMT) (p=0.02) and in the delayed maze time (DMT) (p=0.009) between the pre-frail and frail older adults. An association between FMT DMT performance and frailty was found, showing that older people with shorter times on the DMT (better performance) had approximately four times the chance of not being frail (odds ratio - OR=4.219, 95% confidence interval - 95%CI 1.084-16.426, p=0.038).

Conclusion: Frailty is associated with impaired spatial navigation ability in institutionalized older adults, regardless of gait speed performance.