THE ROLE OF FRAILTY IN PHYSICIANS’ DECISIONS FOR SEVERE DISABILITY

Abstract

Introduction: We aimed to evaluate the correlation between disability approvedby the medical board and frailty determined by the Edmonton Frail Scale, which isa tool used to assess frailty.Materials and Method: We enrolled patients admitted to the neurologyoutpatient clinic of the Bursa Yuksek Ihtisas Training and Research Hospital between1st-31st March 2019 for examination in order to obtain a disability report from themedical board.Results: Cerebrovascular disease and dementia were more prevalent in olderage, while epilepsy, cerebral palsy sequela and other neurological diseases wereobserved at a younger age. A strong correlation was observed between frailtyanalysis score and Balthazard disability percentage (p <0,001, r = 0,57). Similarly,there was a correlation between the physicians’ severe disability opinion and theEdmonton Frail index score. Scores for cognition, general health status, functionalindependence, frequency of forgetting to take prescription drugs, or indications ofrecent weight loss were higher for patients in the severe disability group who alsohad higher EFS scores. We found that EFS scores >8 correlate significantly with anincreased risk of severe disability.Conclusion: We conclude that use of the frailty analysis score in combinationwith Balthazard disability percentage for patients applying to the medical boardcould be practical and rational in evaluating the degree of disability and predictingsevere disability. Since only patients who applied for medical board evaluation to theneurology clinic were included in our study, our results are relevant for neurologycases and cannot be generalized for all patients who applied for evaluation.