Frailty in acute cardiology: comparison of a quick clinical assessment against a validated frailty assessment tool.

Background: Increasingly frail patients are being to be referred for invasive cardiac interventions and cardiac surgery. We aimed to evaluate the utility of a quick clinical assessment of frailty against a validated frailty assessment tool in an acute cardiology setting.

Methods: Forty-seven cardiology in-patients ≥70 years were recruited in this prospective study. All patients were first assessed by a senior cardiology registrar as either not-frail or frail. This was based on general observation and brief discussions. Following this, patients were administered the Reported Edmonton Frail Scale (REFS) questionnaire. After a registrar assessment, the foot-of-the bed frailty assessment was independently repeated by one or two consultant cardiologists.

Results: None of the three clinicians showed satisfactory similarity to the REFS score. When the two consultants were compared with the registrar, and with each other, the Cohen's kappa was only above 0.7 for the comparison between Consultant 1 and the registrar. Consultant 1 and the registrar were also significantly more likely to disagree at higher REFS score with a mean REFS score of 8.8.

Conclusion: A quick foot-of-the-bed clinical assessment is not a reliable way to determine frailty.