Identifying frailty in high functioning older adults with normal mobility

摘要

Identifying frailty in high functioning oldernadults with normal mobilitynSIR—The concept of ‘frailty’ has been used to identifynolder adults at increased risk for disability [1, 2]. A majornobstacle to developing primary prevention strategies fornfrailty is the lack of clinical markers of early frailty, especiallynamong high functioning older adults. The PhysicalnPerformance Battery (PPB) has been reported to predictndisability in older adults [3, 4], but its association withnearly stages of frailty is not well established. We examinednthe validity of PPB to identify frailty in nondisabled andnnondemented community-residing older adults. Slow gaitnis the most easily identifiable feature of frailty [2, 3, 5],nbut may occur later in the disablement process [6–8].nTo assess the ability of PPB to capture mild or very earlynstages of frailty, we further restricted our sample to oldernadults with normal walking speeds.