A comparison of measuring frailty using three approaches: phenotype, grip strength, and frailty index, and their ability to predict health-care utilization in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging

As people age, they become more vulnerable to declining health status, increasing risk of dependency, institutionalization, and mortality. Such vulnerability varies among people of the same age, and this is referred to as frailty. As the Canadian population continues to age, frailty has emerged as an important public health concern. Recent evidence indicates an increased rate of hospitalization, an indicator of healthcare utilization, among frail older adults when compared to non-frail individuals. Currently, however, there is no consensus on the operational definition of frailty. Our proposed study aims to compare three common approaches to measuring frailty: the phenotype, grip strength, and the frailty index, and to compare their ability to predict hospitalization.