Associations between frailty, sociodemographic characteristics and quality-of-life among community-dwelling older adults: A cross-sectional study.
Lijuan Xu, Xuefen Lan, Yan Lou and 1 others
PMID 36412493WHAT IT FOUND
Frailty was linked to lower overall quality of life, physical symptoms and sickness impact in community-dwelling older adults in China.
Fun activities and friendships had the lowest scores, while income, exercise, insurance and age related differently across domains.
Key findings
01Frailty was associated with worse total quality of life and worse physical symptoms and sickness impact scores.
02Quality of everyday activities/fun and quality of close friend relationships had the lowest quality-of-life scores.
03Exercise was associated with higher total quality of life and higher quality of everyday activities/meaningful scores.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot show that frailty, exercise, BMI, income or insurance caused quality-of-life differences. It used a convenience sample of 311 older adults from three communities in one Chinese city, so findings may not apply elsewhere. Only older adults who could attend primary care centres for annual examinations were included, so people too unwell or isolated to attend may be missing. Many quality-of-life factors and percentile models were tested, and results differed by model, so some associations may be chance findings. Frailty, exercise and multimorbidity were measured with brief items, and the quality of family relations factor had lower internal consistency, Cronbach alpha 0.63.
Declared interests
No conflict of interest was declared. The study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the lower quality of life among frail older adults as proof that treating frailty will improve quality of life. This was a one-time survey and cannot show cause.