Journal of Yoga & Physical Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

Frailty and Survival in Patients with End-Stage Renal Disease

Ryota Matsuzawa and Atsuhiko Matsunaga

Frailty is highly prevalent in patients with end-stage renal disease who require hemodialysis therapy. Frailty has been proposed by Fried and colleagues, and predicts poor outcomes in hemodialysis patients. Muscle weakness is a major component of frailty. We previously performed a single-center, prospective, observational, cohort study among 190 Japanese patients undergoing hemodialysis and examined the association of muscle weakness in lower extremity with survival. As a result, muscle weakness in the lower extremities had a significant negative effect on survival in these patients. Muscle weakness is reversibly activated by exercise training or physical therapy in patients undergoing hemodialysis. Therefore, exercise training for patients with end-stage renal disease could improve their prognosis via correction of muscle weakness. In this paper, we reviewed muscle weakness, which is one of the components of frailty, in hemodialysis patients based on our previous study.