Abstract
BackgroundFrail older adults living in long term care (LTC) homes have a high fracture risk, which can result in reduced quality of life, pain and death. The Fracture Risk Scale (FRS) was designed for fracture risk assessment in LTC, to optimize targeting of services in those at highest risk. This study aims to examine the construct validity and discriminative properties of the FRS in three Canadian provinces at 1-year follow up.MethodsLTC residents were included if they were: 1) Adults admitted to LTC homes in Ontario (ON), British Columbia (BC) and Manitoba (MB) Canada; and 2) Received a Resident Assessment Instrument Minimum Data Set Version 2.0. After admission to LTC, one-year hip fracture risk was evaluated for all the included residents using the FRS (an eight-level risk scale, level 8 represents the highest fracture risk). Multiple logistic regressions were used to determine the differences in incident hip or all clinical fractures across the provinces and FRS risk levels. We examined the differences in incident hip or all clinical fracture for each FRS level across the three provinces (adjusted for age, BMI, gender, fallers and previous fractures). We used the C-statistic to assess the discriminative properties of the FRS for each province.ResultsDescriptive statistics on the LTC populations in ON (n = 29,848), BC (n = 3129), and MB (n = 2293) are: mean (SD) age 82 (10), 83 (10), and 84 (9), gender (female %) 66, 64, and 70% respectively. The incident hip fractures and all clinical fractures for FRS risk level were similar among the three provinces and ranged from 0.5 to 19.2% and 1 to 19.2% respectively. The overall discriminative properties of the FRS were similar between ON (C-statistic = 0.673), BC (C-statistic = 0.644) and MB (C-statistic = 0.649) samples.ConclusionFRS is a valid tool for identifying LTC residents at different risk levels for hip or all clinical fractures in three provinces. Having a fracture risk assessment tool that is tailored to the LTC context and embedded within the routine clinical assessment may have significant implications for policy, service delivery and care planning, and may improve care for LTC residents across Canada.
Highlights
Frail older adults living in long term care (LTC) homes have a high fracture risk, which can result in reduced quality of life, pain and death
This study aims to: 1) assess the discriminative properties of the Fracture Risk Scale (FRS) using C-statistics and examine the construct validity of the FRS by comparing incident hip fractures and all clinical fractures for each fracture risk levels in long-term care (LTC) residents across three Canadian provinces at 1-year follow up; 2) compare incident hip and all clinical fractures in LTC residents across three Canadian provinces; and 3) compare incident hip and all clinical fractures between the FRS risk levels
Fracture rating scale The FRS is different from existing fracture risk assessment tools in that it does not use bone mineral density and includes fracture risk factors that are relevant to the long-term care (LTC) population [21]
Summary
Frail older adults living in long term care (LTC) homes have a high fracture risk, which can result in reduced quality of life, pain and death. LTC Residents are often frail, since their multiple physical and cognitive deficits place them at high risk of falls, disability, and death [2, 3]. Hip fractures are the most common type of fracture in LTC (49% of all fractures) [4]. They are more common in older adults living in LTC (49%) than in the community (29%) [4, 5], and lead to more hospitalizations [6] and worsening health-related quality of life [7]. In Canada, 45% of LTC residents with hip fracture die within 12 months [8] and of the survivors, 48% are no longer ambulatory [8]
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