Predictive validity of the Questionnaire for Medical Checkup of Old-Old for functional disability: Using the National...

Area of Science:

• Geriatric Medicine
• Public Health
• Epidemiology

Background:

• The aging population presents complex health challenges requiring effective assessment tools.
• Frailty is a key indicator of vulnerability in older adults, predicting adverse health outcomes.
• Existing tools may not fully capture the multifaceted nature of frailty in the old-old population.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the Questionnaire for Medical Checkup of Old-Old (QMCOO) for assessing frailty.
• To determine if the QMCOO can predict new certifications for long-term care (LTC) in individuals aged 75 and older.
• To explore the impact of comorbidities on the predictive accuracy of the QMCOO.

Main Methods:

• A cohort of 18,130 adults aged ≥75 years in Kashiwa City, Japan, was analyzed.
• The Questionnaire for Medical Checkup of Old-Old (QMCOO) was administered during health checkups.
• Incident disability, defined by new long-term care certification, was tracked until January 2022 using national health insurance data.

Main Results:

• 4.0% of participants experienced incident disability during the follow-up period.
• The QMCOO demonstrated optimal predictive accuracy for new LTC needs with a score threshold of 3/4.
• Individuals scoring ≥4 on the QMCOO had a 2.5-fold increased risk of incident disability, significantly higher (6.6-fold) when comorbidities were present.

Conclusions:

• The QMCOO is a potentially valuable tool for predicting incident disability in the old-old population.
• Integrating comorbidity information with QMCOO scores improves its predictive power for long-term care needs.
• The QMCOO can aid in efficient healthcare assessment and prevention of long-term care dependency, contributing to extended healthy life expectancy.