Using the Short Physical Performance Battery for Frailty Screenings Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults: An ROC...

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Geriatric Medicine
• Clinical Epidemiology

Background:

• Frailty is a common and serious condition in older adults, with various assessment tools available.
• The Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) has been suggested as a quick frailty screening tool, showing good agreement with Fried's phenotype.
• No prior studies have evaluated the SPPB's accuracy against the FRAIL questionnaire as a criterion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the diagnostic accuracy of the SPPB with the FRAIL questionnaire for screening frailty and frailty process in community-dwelling older adults.
• To determine the sensitivity, specificity, and AUC of the SPPB when compared to the FRAIL questionnaire.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study involving 371 community-dwelling older adults (≥60 years).
• Frailty and frailty process were assessed using the SPPB (≤8 for frailty, ≤10 for frailty process) and the FRAIL questionnaire.
• Statistical analyses included McNemar tables and receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis.

Main Results:

• Significant differences were found between SPPB and FRAIL questionnaire classifications for both frailty and frailty process (p < 0.001).
• For frailty, SPPB showed 62.9% sensitivity, 78.6% specificity, and 0.78 AUC.
• For frailty process, SPPB showed 77.6% sensitivity, 55.3% specificity, and 0.70 AUC, indicating limited diagnostic accuracy compared to FRAIL.

Conclusions:

• The SPPB demonstrates limited diagnostic accuracy for assessing frailty and frailty process when compared to the FRAIL questionnaire.
• The SPPB should not be the sole method for evaluating frailty in older adults.
• Clinicians should utilize multiple assessments addressing biological, social, and functional aspects for a comprehensive frailty evaluation.