Epidemiology of frailty
Although there is no standardized definition for frailty, there is no disagreement on its catastrophic impact on older individuals and their families. Also it is not easy to know the exact prevalence of frail older adults due to ongoing debate on the exact nature of frailty (Abellan van Kan et al., 2008a).
According to the World Health Organization, the global population of elderly people aged 60 years or more was 600 million in 2000; it is expected to rise to around 2 billion by 2050. The incidence and prevalence of frailty are expected to increase with population aging, which consequently poses a great challenge to public healthcare and social care systems as demands for medical and care resources increase (Collard et al., 2012).
With an aging population, there is a growing interest for frailty (Karunananthan et al., 2009). Indeed, a quarter to a half of people older than 85 years are estimated to be frail (Clegg et al., 2013).
According to various studies, the prevalence of frailty in community-dwelling elderly adults varies from 4.0% to 59.1%, it seems to increase with age, appears to be greater in women than in men and is more prevalent in people, with lower education and income, with poorer …show more content…
It increases with age from 3.9% in the age-group 65-74 years to 25% in the age group older than 85 years (Fried et al., 2004). The prevalence of frailty is higher in women than in men (8% versus 5%) and higher in African Americans than in Caucasians. It also appears to have geographic differences. The overall prevalence is 17% in Europe, ranging from 5.8% in Switzerland to 27% in Spain, while the prevalence in Latin American and Caribbean cities is much higher, ranging from 30% to 48% in women and from 21% to 35% in men (Santos-Eggimann et al., 2009; Alvarado et al.,