Frailty and Polypharmacy in Primary Care

The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) is a clinical judgement-based frailty tool developed from the Canadian Study of Health and Aging. Many studies on the measurement of frailty and its effect on clinical outcomes have been conducted on patients hospitalized, especially in intensive care units. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between polypharmacy and frailty on outpatient older adult patients in primary care.

This cross-sectional study included 298 patients who were aged ≥65 years and admitted to Yenimahalle Family Health Center between May-2022 and July-2022. Frailty was evaluated by using CFS. Polypharmacy was defined as five medications or more and "excessive polypharmacy" as 10 medications or more. The medications below five are grouped as "no polypharmacy".

There was a statistically significance between age groups, gender, smoking status, marital status, polypharmacy status, and FS (p = .003 and η²: .20; p < .001 and Cohen d: .80; p = .018 and Cohen d: .35; p < .001 and Cohen d: 1.10 and p < .001 and η²: 1.45 respectively). A strong, positive correlation was found between polypharmacy and the frailty score.

Polypharmacy, especially excessive polypharmacy, may be a promising adjunct to frailty in identifying older patients whose health is more likely to worsen. Providers in primary care should also consider frailty when prescribing drugs.