Predicting risk and outcomes for frail older adults: a protocol for an umbrella review of available frailty screening tools.

Abstract

REVIEW QUESTION / OBJECTIVE The aim of this systematic review is to comprehensively search the available literature and to summarize the best available evidence from systematic reviews in relation to published screening tools to identify pre-frailty and frailty in older adults, that is: (i) to determine their psychometric proprieties; (ii) to assess their capacity to detect pre-frail and frail conditions against established methods; and (iii) to evaluate their predictive ability. More specifically, the review will focus on the following questions: - What is the reliability and validity of existing screening tools that assess pre-frailty/frailty in older patients? - How sensitive and specific are pre-frailty/frailty assessment tools in identifying patients with poor prognosis? - What is the ability of available pre-frailty/frailty assessment tools to predict adverse health outcomes such as functional disability, hospitalization, institutionalization, comorbidities and death? INCLUSION CRITERIA Types of participants This umbrella review will consider systematic reviews that include older adults (male and female), aged 65 years or over, in primary care networks (general practice, geriatrics, psychology, etc.) and in institutionalized or community care settings. Because of the aims of this review (to determine the utility of screening in terms of detecting or predicting risk of currently available tools that assess pre-frailty and frailty in older adults in terms of outcome prognostics), various definitions of frailty will be considered: (i) focused on physical markers of frailty, (ii) based on the accumulation of deficits from physical, cognitive, mental health and functional domains, and (iii) integrating demographic, medical, psychological, social and TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS