Impact of Physical Frailty on Pulmonary Rehabilitation and Hospitalisation in COPD

Prevalence and prognostic impact of physical frailty in interstitial lung disease: A prospective cohort study

“…In contrast, physical frailty is a simpler assessment of frailty that involves the assessment of five domains, and has been shown to be modifiable with pulmonary rehabilitation in patients with COPD. 10 Importantly, we found that Fried's 5-domain assessment of physical frailty conferred a similar 2.5-3.5-fold increased risk of death at 1.7 years, independent of age, sex, lung function and ILD diagnosis. Of interest, the domains of low physical activity and slowness contributed most to the increased risk of death, although we note that our questionnaire-based assessment of muscle weakness may lack the discriminatory ability of more objective measures such as grip strength, or other more objective measures of frailty such as the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) and 4-m gait speed.…”

“…8,9 Evidence demonstrating the modifiable nature of physical frailty, with the implementation of pulmonary rehabilitation in the COPD population, highlights the potential value of its assessment in other chronic lung diseases. 10 Only one study has evaluated the prognostic impact of physical frailty in ILD, specifically ILD patients awaiting lung transplantation, and found frail patients to have a threefold higher mortality than non-frail patients at 12 months. 11 Other studies have described the prognostic value of a complementary, but distinct operational definition of frailty in ILD (the cumulative deficit model).…”