Observational studyClinical interventions in aging2020
The Association of a Frailty Index and Incident Delirium in Older Hospitalized Patients: An Observational Cohort Study.
Observational study in Clinical interventions in aging, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Postoperative Delirium After Cardiac Surgery: Psychiatric Vulnerability, Biological Mechanisms, and Prevention Strategies.Medical sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Association of physical frailty, functional dependence, dysphagia, and depression with mild cognitive impairment in hospitalized older adults.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Frailty and hospital outcomes among patients with neurological disorders.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Article
- Influence of different anesthetic depth on postoperative delirium in elderly pre-frail patients undergoing abdominal surgery.Perioperative medicine (London, England) · 2025Article
- Factors associated with delirium in a real-world acute-care setting: analysis considering the interdependence of clinical variables with the frailty syndrome.European geriatric medicine · 2024Article
- Predicting postoperative delirium after hip arthroplasty for elderly patients using machine learning.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2023Article
- Incidence and associations of hospital delirium diagnoses in 85,979 people with severe mental illness: A data linkage study.Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica · 2023Article
- Hospital admission and the occurrence of delirium in older adults with physical frailty: cross-sectional study.Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da U S P · 2023Article
- Recipe for primary prevention of delirium in hospitalized older patients.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2022Review
- Incidence and interaction factors of delirium as an independent risk of mortality in elderly patients in the intensive units: a retrospective analysis from MIMIC-IV database.Aging clinical and experimental research · 2022Article
- Severity of frailty using modified Thai frailty index, social factors, and prediction of mortality among community-dwelling older adults in a middle-income country.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Article
- The degree of frailty as a translational measure of health in aging.Nature aging · 2021Review
- The delirium screening tool 4AT in routine clinical practice: prediction of mortality, sensitivity and specificity.European geriatric medicine · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION/
backgroundFrailty identifies patients that have vulnerability to stress. Acute illness and hospitalization are stressors that may result in delirium and further accelerate the negative consequences of frailty. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to determine whether frailty, identified at hospital admission and as measured by a frailty index, is associated with incident delirium.
methodsA retrospective, observational, cohort study was done at a Veterans hospital between January 2013 and March 2014. English-speaking patients over 55 years were eligible. Exclusion criteria included inability to complete baseline assessments due to pre-existing cognitive impairment, emergent surgery; and/or admission from a nursing home, pre-existing delirium, and those with psychiatric disease or substance use disorder. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Frailty index (FI) variables included cognitive screening, physical function and comorbidities. The FI was calculated as a proportion of possible deficits (range 0 to 1; higher scores indicate increased frailty). Incident delirium was measured daily by an expert clinician interview.
resultsA total of 247 patients were admitted and 218 met inclusion/exclusion criteria, with a mean age of 71.54 years (SD = 9.53 years) and were predominantly white (92.7%) and male (91.7%). Participants were grouped using FI ranges as non-frail (FI <0.25, n=56 (26%)), pre-frail (FI =0.25-0.35, n=86 (39%)), and frail (FI >0.35, n=76 (35%)). Pre-frailty and frailty were associated with incident delirium (non-frail: 3.6% vs pre-frail: 20.9% vs frail: 29.3%,
conclusionThis study demonstrates that a frailty index is independently associated with incident delirium and suggests that admission assessments for frailty may identify patients at high risk of developing delirium.
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