Frailty Assessment Tools for Adults with Obesity: A Scoping Review
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Published on: September 23, 2025
Bruna Silveira1, Amanda Farias E Farias2, Gabriela Ferreira Guimarães2
1Universidade do Estado de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil. bruna.silveira@live.com.
Purpose:
To identify, classify, and compare available tools for frailty assessment in adults with obesity.
Methods:
A scoping review was conducted across five databases, including grey literature searches and an ascendancy approach. Seventeen studies were included, with a total sample size of 4,953,011 participants, of whom 4,931,181 were adults with obesity (99.56% of the total sample). Data on sample characteristics, assessment tools, and outcomes were extracted.
Results:
The most common methodological approach was comorbidity-based instruments, used in 9 of the 17 included studies (52.9%), followed by syndrome-based instruments (4/17; 23.5%), performance-based instruments (2/17; 11.8%), and population-specific instruments (2/17; 11.8%). Among the ten instruments identified, the Frailty Index (FI) was the most frequently used.
Conclusion:
There are ten different instruments for frailty assessment in adults with obesity, they are heterogeneous and mainly focus on comorbidity-related aspects. Currently, none of the instruments, methods, or tools identified in this review comprehensively captured the multidimensional nature of frailty in this population.
