Frailty, profile and cognition of elderly residents in a highly socially vulnerability area

Abstract

This study aimed to associate frailty with sociodemographic profile and cognition of elderly people living in highly socially vulnerable contexts registered at a Social Assistance Referral Centers in a city of inland São Paulo. This is a cross-sectional and quantitative study with 48 elderly. Data was collected with a sociodemographic interview, the Edmonton Frail Scale and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and was analyzed with the Jonckheere-Terpstra test, Spearman’s correlation and logistic regression (α = 5.0%). This study was approved under Opinion Nº 72182. Of the 48 elderly interviewed, 33.4% were non-frail, 20.8% were apparently vulnerable and 45.8% were frail at some level (mild, moderate or severe). Women (OR = 4.64) and nonwhites (OR = 3.99) were more likely of being frail. The realms with the greatest influence in the determination of frailty were cognition, independence and functional performance, general health and mood, although gender (p = 0.0373) and ethnicity (p = 0.0284) had a significant association. Worth highlighting is that considering the frailty profile of the elderly warrants the development of specific care strategies for this segment of the population in a vulnerable area, preventing futures complications.