Clinical Tools to Diagnose Frailty in Women With Geriatric Urinary Incontinence

Establishing an efficient and accurate frailty measure in older women with bothersome urinary incontinence (UI) is necessary because frailty increases the risk of UI treatment failure and postoperative morbidity.

This study aimed to primarily observe associations between the clinical frailty measure of gait speed and the electronic frailty index (eFI) to determine if the eFI may be a proxy in determining presence of frailty in older women with moderate-to-severe UI symptoms.

This was a secondary data analysis of a prospective cohort study of women, older than 70 years, seeking treatment for UI between 2016 and 2023. Participants underwent functional geriatric assessment to determine 4-m gait speed, chair stand pace, and UI symptom assessment. Participants with ≥2 UI episodes per day defined severe UI symptoms present with geriatric UI. Those with <2 UI episodes per day defined controls. Univariate analyses compared clinical and functional characteristics based on UI severity. Spearman rank correlated the association between the eFI, UI severity, and functional geriatric impairments. Logistic regression analyses determined the odds of having severe UI based on eFI frailty risk, adjusted for age and body mass index (BMI).

Eighty-one participants were included. The eFI was negatively correlated with gait speed ([r] = -0.29, P  = 0.02) and did not correlate with chair stand pace. The eFI did not correlate with UI severity ([r] = 0.05, P  = 0.74). The odds of having severe UI and at least mild frailty risk based on the eFI was OR of 1.15 (95% CI, 0.71-1.88]).

The eFI may have limited clinical utility in frailty risk assessment in women with geriatric UI.