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SARC-F Questionnaire Detects Frailty in Older Adults

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The journal of nutrition, health & aging

Abstract

Background/Objectives

The physical phenotype of frailty, described by Fried et al., shows significant overlap with sarcopenia. EWGSOP2 recommends the SARC-F questionnaire to screen for sarcopenia. Considering common features between both conditions, we aimed to investigate whether the SARC-F questionnaire could also be a valid and reliable tool to screen or evaluate frailty.

Design

Retrospective, cross-sectional.

Setting

Istanbul University Istanbul Faculty of Medicine.

Participants

A total of 447 older adults (70.7% female, mean age: 74.5±6.6 years).

Measurements

Frailty was assessed by the modified Fried scale. SARC-F questionnaire was performed by all participants. We used a receiver operating characteristics curve to obtain SARC-F cut-off values to detect frailty, and calculated the area under the curve and 95% confidence interval.

Results

There were 93 (20.8%) older adults with frailty according to the modified Fried scale. SARC-F cut-off ≥1 had 91.4% sensitivity and 44.9% specificity. SARC-F cut-off ≥2 presented the best balance between sensitivity and specificity (sensitivity: 74.1% vs. specificity: 73.7%) to identify frailty (area under curve: 0.807; 95% confidence interval: 0.76–0.84, p<0.001). SARC-F ≥4 had high specificity of 92.6% with a sensitivity of 46.2%.

Conclusion

We suggest that SARC-F ≥1 point can be used to screen for frailty with high sensitivity, and SARC-F ≥4 can be used to diagnose frailty with high specificity. SARC-F may be used to evaluate frailty in usual geriatric practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Geriatrics, Istanbul Medical School, Istanbul University, Capa, 34390, Istanbul, Turkey

    Gulistan Bahat, S. Ozkok, C. Kilic & M. A. Karan

Authors
  1. Gulistan Bahat
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  2. S. Ozkok
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  3. C. Kilic
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  4. M. A. Karan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gulistan Bahat.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest: There are no other relationships/conditions/circumstances that present a potential conflict of interest.

Ethical standards: The study was conducted according to guidelines in the Declaration of Helsinki. The study was approved from the local ethic committee.

Additional information

Statement of Authorship: Mehmet Akif Karan: Supervision, Reviewing and Editing. Cihan Kilic: Data curation. Gulistan Bahat: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing- Original draft preparation, Validation, Writing- Reviewing and Editing, Supervision. Serdar Ozkok: Writing- Reviewing and Editing.

Sponsor’s role: None.

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Bahat, G., Ozkok, S., Kilic, C. et al. SARC-F Questionnaire Detects Frailty in Older Adults. J Nutr Health Aging 25, 448–453 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-020-1543-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-020-1543-9

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