Sex differences in the impact of physical frailty on outcomes in heart failure.
Sara H Archer, Christopher S Lee, Nandita Gupta and 6 others
PMID 37156061WHAT IT FOUND
In heart failure, physical frailty was linked to worse quality of life in women and higher one-year risk of hospitalization, death, or emergency care in men.
The study did not show a clear sex difference, and frailty category was not linked to events.
Key findings
01Physical frailty was identified in 43% of participants.
02After adjusting for clinical risk, physically frail participants had 75% worse overall quality of life and 112% worse physical quality of life than non-frail participants.
03For every one-point increase in physical frailty score, there was a 46% higher one-year clinical event risk among men, but not women.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study included only 115 participants from one center in the Pacific Northwest, and the sample was racially homogeneous, so results may not apply to many communities. The sample was small, which limited the ability to detect sex differences, especially interactions. Very few participants were robust or non-frail, so the comparison was mostly frail versus pre-frail. This was an observational study, so it can show associations but cannot prove that frailty caused the outcomes. The clinical event endpoint combined death, cardiovascular hospitalization, and emergency department visits, so it does not separate different types of events.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicting interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that frailty has proven sex-specific effects on outcomes. The study did not find a clear sex difference, and the frailty-event link was seen only with continuous scores in men, not with frailty category overall.