Assessment of frailty and related factors among the elderly cared at a reference center

This study aims to assess frailty and to identify the risk factors among the elderly cared at a reference center. It is a descriptive, exploratory study with a quantitative approach, carried out with 38 elderly cared at the Full Care Center for the Elderly Health, located in São Luís, the capital city of Maranhão, Brazil. One built the instrument for data collection with social-demographic data (gender, age, marital status, income and education). Brazilian validated version of Edmonton Frail Scale for the assessment of frailty. Barthel’s Index for the assessment of the Basic Activities of Daily Life and by Lawton’s Scale for the assessment of the Instrumental Activities of Daily Life. One conducted the descriptive analysis and the use of Kruskall-Wallis’s Test, by adopting the significance level p≥0.005. By applying Kruskall-Wallis’s Test between the categories of the frail scale and the study variables, one evidenced significant statistical difference between moderate frailty and dependence in the Instrumental Activities of Daily Life (p=0.001) and moderate frailty and illiteracy (p=0.001). One verified that the frequence of frailty among the researched population is high and that the presence of moderate frailty is associated with the limitation in the Instrumental Activities of Daily Life and the elderly illiteracy.