Explore the correlations between malnutrition, frailty and risk for fall among older outpatients in hospital clinics

• Main Authors: Tsung-Jung Yu, 余宗蓉
• Other Authors: Shu-Yuan Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7mpr9x

碩士 === 高雄醫學大學 === 護理學系碩士班 === 106 === Among the elderly group who visited outpatient department for certain medical treatment, it was easy to see the obvious fact that the ones had more comorbidity and also had higher risk of frailty, malnutrition and fall events. However, in outpatient department service modes, we do not have the opportunity to perform detailed assessment in these debilitating elderly groups. In hypothesis of frailty, malnutrition was one of those aggravating factors and both contributed to worse consequences, such as fall events. In Contemporary articles and reviews, in the elderly groups at outpatient clinic services, it had few convincing references to know how much correlation it was among frailty, malnutrition and fall. For the purpose, this study aimed to understand the followings: (1) To know the extent of frailty in elderly in outpatient clinic services (2) To evaluate the extent of malnutrition risk in elderly in outpatient clinic services (3) To evaluate the extent of fall risk in elderly in outpatient clinic services (4) To know how much correlation it was among frailty, malnutrition and fall. In this study, we executed a cross-sectional design and recruited the elderly volunteers in outpatient clinics, including integrated-geriatric, geriatric and general medicine department in the medical center of Southern Taiwan. A total of 145 cases were recruited during the study. All participants had accepted questionnaire analysis, including (1) Key individual clinical characteristics (2) Edmonton Frail Scale in Chinese version (3) Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (4) Peninsula Health-Fall RiskAssessmentTool. Also, all participants had accepted further 3-meter walking test and grasp muscle power measurement. For the statistical analysis, we had used software with version 14.0 of SPSS for Windows. The statistical data included the average, percentage, Standard Deviation and inferential statistics of Spearman Rank Correlation and Chi-square distribution. Among those participants, it was in average age of 73.43 (± 8.27) years-oid and female predominant, 58.6% included. In subgroups analysis, it was present in 71%, 14.5%, and 14.5% of the nonfrail, prefrail, and frail subjects. Malnutrition risk was present in 90.3% and 9.7% of low risk and mid/high risk groups and fall risk was present in 96.6% and 3.4% of low risk and mid/high risk groups. We analyzed those data in Spearman correlation coefficient and showed positive correlation in frailty and fall (r=.21, p＜.01), but neither correlation in frailty and malnutrition (r= –.07, p＝.39) nor in fall and malnutrition(r= –.06, p＝.46). In conclusion, in the elderly at outpatient clinic, the result showed the more frailty and the higher fall risks. It benefits from earlier risk assessment of frailty and fall in the elderly at outpatient practice, and we could do the individual intervention to avoid worse consequences, like more frailty and falls. However, the undetermined result had been among malnutrition, frailty and falls and need more analysis in future study.