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Updated: Aug 14, 2025

Measuring Frailty in HIV-infected Individuals. Identification of Frail Patients is the First Step to Amelioration and Reversal of Frailty
Published on: July 24, 2013
The reliability of a frailty index may depend on the deficits included
Anna Martine Petronella Verwiel1, Martin Pulvermann1, Nadine Heleen Smit1
1Department of Geriatric Medicine, Radboud University Medical Center, Geert Grooteplein Zuid 10, 6525 GA, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Purpose:
Recently, a short version of the TOPICS-MDS questionnaire, the Short Form (SF) was developed. The aim of this study was to assess the validity and reliability of two versions of a frailty index (FI) based on this SF: with or without information on present diseases included.
Methods:
This was a clinical, prospective study of geriatric patients. An FI based on the TOPICS-SF items alone (SF-FI) and an FI with the disease information as additional deficits (MDS-FI) were calculated. Criterion and construct validity and reliability were assessed.
Results:
95 patients were included. A strong correlation was found between SF-FI and MDS-FI scores (Pearson's r = 0.92). Data supported four out of six hypotheses for the construct validity. However, a Bland-Altman plot and a regression analysis showed that the SF-FI was generally higher than the MDS-FI.
Conclusion:
This study indicates that the reliability of the TOPICS-SF-FI depends on the presence of disease information.
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