Frailty and malnutrition among Egyptian elderly: prevalence and risk factors in nursing home and community dwelling elderly

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Community Environmental and Occupational medicine. Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University.

2 Department of Geraitrics and Geronotolgy. Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University.

3 Ministry of Health and population.

Abstract

Abstract
Background: frailty and malnutrition are common problems among elders. Studying these two concepts is very important as both of them are amenable for preventive interventions and are reversible.
Aim: To measure the prevalence of frailty and malnutrition among two groups of Egyptian elderly; nursing homes and community dwellers and to identify risk factors of these two problems.
Methods: the study included 350 elderly males and females aged 60 and over, 175 participants from nursing homes and 175 community dwellers. An interview questionnaire collected data about: sociodemographic data, health status, functionality of family (family APGAR score), screening for depression (5 item Geriatric Depression Scale) and cognitive status (Mini-Mental state). Frailty was measured using SHARE frailty index whereas nutritional status was measured using the Mini Nutritional Assessment questionnaire (MNA).
Results: Prevalence of frailty was 77.1% among elderly in nursing homes compared to 66.3% among community dwellers with no significant difference between them. As regard Nutritional status, nursing home had significantly higher percentage of malnourished participants compared to community dwelling participants (43.4% Vs 30.9%). Using the 5 items GDS, 57.7% of elderly were at risk of depression while 42% had impaired cognitive function using the MMSE. Frailty and malnutrition were highly prevalent in older age, in females, in widowed elderly, in those living alone, in participants with dysfunctional family, with comorbidities, with more than three comorbidities, with ischemic heart disease, receiving more than 3 drugs, with depressive symptoms and in those with lower cognitive performances
Conclusions: Frailty and malnutrition are highly prevalent problems among elderly in both nursing homes and

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