Measuring frailty in older Canadians: an analysis of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA)

Frailty is a condition associated with a higher risk of health problems and disability. It becomes more common with aging. Despite the widespread use of the term, there is no agreement on how best to identify frail adults. Researchers have identified several factors that are commonly encountered in a person who is frail, such as weakness, slowed movement, weight loss, reduced mental ability, and inability to perform activities of daily living. The relative importance of these factors and the relationships among them are not well understood. The goal of this project is to use data from the CLSA to develop a way to reliably identify frail individuals and explore which factors are related to frailty. This information can be useful to healthcare professionals and health policy-makers. Hopefully it will eventually help improve both the quality of care of older Canadians and the efficiency of the use of health-care resources.

Frailty, especially at its earlier stages, may represent a period of transition from healthy aging to dependency that could be a target for interventions directed at restoring robustness and delaying decline. There is no agreement on how to measure frailty. The objective of this study was to evaluate the frailty of participants in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA) using a Frailty Index based on the cumulative deficit theory of frailty. A Frailty Index was simple to construct in the CLSA, having good fit of the data and met our expectations for a good measurement tool (i.e. construct validity). These results are consistent with previous research on the cumulative deficit theory of frailty. The Frailty Index is recommended as a valid and reproducible approach for measuring frailty in the CLSA and similar population datasets.