Healthy Aging Research
Open Access

Abstract

Cystic Fibrosis: Detecting frailty in an outpatient clinic

Nathaniel Ferguson, David Proud, Carwyn Bridges, Jamie Duckers

Background: With an ever-increasing life expectancy, the focus of cystic fibrosis (CF) care is shifting towards treating the premature appearance of age-related comorbidities associated with frailty. The purpose of this study was to assess whether frailty can be detected in CF patients in an outpatient setting, and whether it is associated with a poorer health status.

Methods: Physical frailty tests were conducted in a clinic setting as part of an annual review of health on consenting CF patients, using recognised frailty protocol.

Results: Frailty was found to be associated with older age and more comorbidities than among robust patients. Frail patients had significantly poorer lung function and received more intravenous antibiotics per annum than non-frail patients.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that simple criteria can be incorporated into routine outpatient appointments to detect frailty among CF patients, found to correlate with poorer health.