Review Article
Global Prevalence of Physical Frailty by Fried's Criteria in Community-Dwelling Elderly With National Population-Based Surveys

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Abstract

This study presents a brief review of 6 articles published between 2001 and 2014 that examined the prevalence of frailty as defined by the Fried scale in community-dwelling adults representative of the national population, age 65 years and older.

Section snippets

Methods

The methods for this study were based on the process of review of data gathering, extraction, and assessment. The literature was systematically searched via PubMed and Embase databases using the following keywords: “frail” or “frailty” combined with “aged,” “aging,” “elderly,” or “older,” “national” or “nationwide,” “population” or “community-dwelling,” and “prevalence.” Two authors (JC and AA) identified published articles through searches of the databases for the period between January 1,

Results

Our search process yielded 1240 articles (Figure 1). Based on the title and content of the abstract, 1212 articles were excluded for the following reasons: article not published in English; study population not of interest (nonelderly population); statistical methods topic; or the study was not focused on the prevalence of frailty, but rather its mechanism, intervention, or management. Of the remaining 28 articles, 23 were eliminated after review of the full text for not addressing the research

Discussion

The Survey of Health and Living Status of the Elderly in Taiwan reported a lower prevalence of frailty than that of other studies. This may be due to underestimation because of inclusion of fewer women, the younger age of the population, or use of a noninstitutionalized population.8 In the SHARE, a high prevalence of frailty in southern European countries (Spain, Italy, France, and Greece) may have been due to overestimation because of lower rates of institutionalization of older, disabled

Conclusion

This study has presented a brief review of 6 articles published between 2001 and 2014 that examined the prevalence of frailty as defined by the Fried scale in community-dwelling adults representative of the national population, age 65 years and older. The prevalence of frailty was found to vary from 4.9% to 27.3%, whereas the prevalence of prefrailty varied from 34.6% to 50.9%. To determine the true prevalence of frailty, a systematic approach to study design and methods should be carefully

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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