Frailty decreases physical health domain of quality of life in nursing home elderly
Abstract: Approximately 10-27%
of the population aged >65 years suffers from frailty. The percentage
increases with age so that the prevalence of frailty in the population aged
>85 years reaches 45%. The objective of this study was to determine the
relationship between frailty and
quality of life (QOL) in nursing home elderly.
This was a cross-sectional study of 138 subjects aged >60 years who
were recruited from 4 nursing homes in West Jakarta. Participants with frailty
status were evaluated by the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe
(SHARE) instrument and QOL was evaluated by the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire.
One-way ANOVA and chi-square tests were used to find relations between the
frailty syndrome and QOL.
The percentages of respondents with pre-frail, frail, and non-frail
status were 30.4%, 52.2%, and 17.4%, respectively. A decline in QOL scores of
pre-frail and frail respondents was found for almost all QOL domains (physical,
psychological and environment domains), except social relationships. The
subdomains most influenced were “energy and fatigue” in the physical health
domain, “thinking, learning, memory and concentration” in psychological health,
and “opportunities for acquiring new information and skills” in the environment
domain.
More than half of the nursing home elderly were frail and one-third were
pre-frail. The main factor of frailty was weakness. The frailty syndrome in the
elderly has a negative impact on QOL, especially in the physical health,
psychological and environment domains in nursing home elderly.
Author: Yvonne Suzy Handajani,
Nelly Tina Widjaja, Yuda Turana
Journal Code: jpkedokterangg150288
