Summary of best evidence for prevention and management of frailty

Frailty in older people can seriously affect their quality of life and increase the demand for long-term care and health care expenses. Aims of this study are to provide an evidence-based basis for clinical practice of frailty in older people by systematically searching for the best current evidence on interventions for the prevention and management of frailty.

According to the '6S' evidence resource model, evidence retrieval is searched from the top-down and collected relevant guidelines, best practices, evidence summaries, systematic reviews and expert consensus. The retrieval time limit was from the database establishment to 20 March 2023. Two reviewers independently screened and evaluated the literature, and then extracted and summarised the evidence according to the JBI grading of evidence and recommendation system.

A total of 44 publications were finally included, including 12 guidelines, 5 best practices, 4 expert consensus, 5 evidence summaries and 18 systematic reviews. Through the induction and integration of the evidence, the evidence was finally summarised from eight aspects: frailty screening, frailty assessment, exercise intervention, nutrition intervention, multi-domain intervention, drug administration, social support and health education, and 43 best evidences were formed.

This study summarised the best evidence for the prevention and management of frailty from eight aspects, which can provide guidance for clinical or community medical staff to develop and apply frailty intervention and practice programmes for older people and improved the clinical outcome and quality of life of older people.