Prevalence and clinical profile of frailty
The prevalence of frail patients varied between 27.5% with the Fried scale and 11.0% with the CFS. Prefrail and robust patients were 48.6% and 23.9% with the Fried scale and 73.4% and 15.6% with the CFS respectively.
The concordance between both scales when classifying individuals as “frail” or “non-frail”, assessed with the kappa index, was only moderate (kappa index 0.52).
As the frailty status increased, there was a significative linear trend towards being female and older age, worse functional status, lower hemoglobin and worse quality of life.
Figure 2 summarizes, for the basal characteristics of the patients, the presence or not of significative linear trend among the three ordinal levels of frailty.