Abdulmalik Almufarrih*, Badr Almutairi, Nayef Alblowi, Saeed Asiri, Ahmad Alnashri, Saad Albattal, Medhat Maher and Mostafa Kofi

Department of Family and Community Medicine, Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

*Corresponding Author: Abdulmalik Almufarrih, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Received: November 03, 2021; Published: November 26, 2021

Abstract

Background: Frailty is a geriatric clinical syndrome characterized by increased vulnerability to a wide range of negative outcomes such as falls, disability, institutionalization, and mortality. Frailty is becoming a major public health issue as the population of the elderly continues to grow for developing future planning, intervention, and treatment for the targeted groups. As a result, the purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of frailty in older adults and to identify risk factors for frailty, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Methods: A cross-sectional observational study was carried out in 2021 convenient sample of 228 from the elderly patients aged 60-year-old or above who are attending Al-Wazart health center of Prince Sultan Military Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A data collection form that consists of two parts, the first part assessed the patient demographics, comorbidities, and medications, while the second part consisted of the FRAIL scale and the Mini-cog test.

Result: A total of 228 Saudi elderly patients participated in the current study, the male gender represented 51.8% of the studied sample, and 42.1% were in the age group of 60-65 years old. The largest percentage (43.4%) of the participants were in the BMI group of 25-29.9 kg/m², the vast majority (97.4%) of them were nonsmokers, and living with their families (99.1%). Almost one-third of the participants have a caregiver at 32.0%, and 46.1% were illiterate. It was found that the prevalence of frailty was 25.4% while 24.6% were prefrail. There was a statistically significant difference (P < 0.05) between the robust, frail, and prefrail subjects in terms of age, educational level, and presence of a caregiver.

Conclusion: The prevalence of frailty syndrome was 25.4%, while 24.6% were prefrail. Possible cognitive impairment was reported in 18.4%. Old age, dyslipidemia, heart failure, hypothyroidism, and polypharmacy, were the significant risk factors for frailty. As the older adults population size in Saudi Arabia is growing with greater longevity, the impact of frailty syndrome could not be ignored and neglected. Further study is needed to validate our findings in other large-scale population of older adults.

Keywords: Frailty; Elderly; Geriatric; Saudi Arabia

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Citation

Citation: Abdulmalik Almufarrih., et al. “The Prevalence of Frailty and its Associated Risk Factors Among the Saudi Elderly Population in Primary Health Care in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia”.Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 5.12 (2021): 158-165.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Abdulmalik Almufarrih., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.