Observational studyBMJ open2021
Frailty degree and illness trajectories in older people towards the end-of-life: a prospective observational study.
Observational study in BMJ open, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Components and classification of frailty and palliative care.The Journal of frailty & aging · 2026Article
- Assisted dying practices for individuals living with frailty: prevalence and eligibility.Age and ageing · 2026Article
- Experiences of Primary Care Nurse Case Managers in Palliative Care Needs Identification and Complex Chronic Patients' Referral to Advanced Palliative Care Resources.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- SANTANA Cohort: Study on Frailty in Institutionalised Older Adults and Its Relationship With Gordon's Functional Health Patterns.Journal of advanced nursing · 2025Article
- Association of Clinical Indicators of Acute Deterioration and Morbidity and Mortality in the Residential Aged Care Population: A Retrospective Cohort Study of Routinely Collected Health Data.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2025Article
- Progression of frailty and cardiovascular outcomes among Medicare beneficiaries.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2024Article
- Progression of Frailty and Cardiovascular Outcomes Among Medicare Beneficiaries.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- [Prevalence and clinical characteristics of pain in patients with advanced chronic disease].Atencion primaria · 2023Observational
- A Critical Appraisal of the Diagnostic and Prognostic Utility of the Anti-Inflammatory Marker IL-37 in a Clinical Setting: A Case Study of Patients with Diabetes Type 2.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- The Experiences and Views on Palliative Care of Older People with Multimorbidities, Their Family Caregivers and Professionals in a Spanish Hospital.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Development and validation of retrospective electronic frailty index using operational data of aged care homes.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- Transitions between degrees of multidimensional frailty among older people admitted to intermediate care: a multicentre prospective study.BMC geriatrics · 2022Observational
- Assessing the Costs of Home Palliative Care in Italy: Results for a Demetra Multicentre Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Disparities in the burden of gastrointestinal diseases: a comprehensive analysis of data from randomized clinical trials from 2000-2023.Annals of gastroenterologyArticle
- End-of-Life Care in an Acute Neurological Ward: A Retrospective Analysis of Clinical Practices During the Last Week of Life.The Journal of neuroscience nursing : journal of the American Association of Neuroscience NursesObservational
- Descriptions of advanced multimorbidity: A scoping review with content analysis.Journal of multimorbidity and comorbidityReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo assess the degree of frailty in older people with different advanced diseases and its relationship with end-of-life illness trajectories and survival.
methodsProspective, observational study, including all patients admitted to the Acute Geriatric Unit of the University Hospital of Vic (Spain) during 12 consecutive months (2014-2015), followed for up to 2 years. Participants were identified as end-of-life people (EOLp) using the NECPAL (
resultsOf the 590 persons with a mean (SD) age of 86.4 (5.6) years recruited, 260 (44.1%) were identified as EOLp, distributed into cancer (n=31, 11.9%), organ failure (n=79, 30.4%), dementia (n=86, 33.1%) and multimorbidity (n=64, 24.6%) trajectories. All 260 EOLp had some degree of frailty, mostly advanced frailty (n=184, 70.8%), regardless of the illness trajectory, and 220 (84.6%) died within 2 years. The area under the ROC curve (95% CI) after 2 years of follow-up for EOLp was 0.87 (0.84 to 0.92) with different patterns of survival decline in the different end-of-life trajectories (p<0.0001). Cox regression analyses showed that each additional deficit of the Frail-VIG index increased the risk of death by 61.5%, 30.1%, 29.6% and 12.9% in people with dementia, organ failure, multimorbidity and cancer, respectively (p<0.01 for all the coefficients).
conclusionsAll older people towards the end-of-life in this study were frail, mostly with advanced frailty. The degree of frailty is related to survival across the different illness trajectories despite the differing survival patterns among trajectories. Frailty indexes may be useful to assess end-of-life older people, regardless of their trajectory.
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