Frailty significantly impairs the short term prognosis in elderly patients with heart failure.

BACKGROUND: Frailty is a condition of elderly characterized by increased vulnerability to stressful events with high risk of adverse outcomes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between frailty and adverse outcomes including death and hospitalization due to heart failure in elderly patients. METHODS: We included patients aged ≥ 65 years with the diagnosis of heart failure. The clinical and laboratory data, echocardiography and ECGs were recorded. Additionally, the frailty scores of the patients were evaluated according to Canadian Study of Health and Aging. All the patients were divided as frail or non-frail. The groups were compared for their characteristics and the occurrence of clinical outcomes. RESULTS: = 0.001). In multivariate analysis, frailty was found to be strongly associated with clinical outcomes in short term. CONCLUSIONS: Being frail in an elderly heart failure patient is associated with death and/or hospitalization due to heart failure in short term. Therefore, frailty score should be evaluated for all elderly heart failure patients as a prognostic marker.