Gerontology
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Despite National Surgical Quality Improvement guidelines to integrate frailty into surgical elder assessments, a quick, accurate, and simple frailty assessment tool suitable for busy clinical settings is still not available. Recently, we have demonstrated that a simple upper-extremity function (UEF) test based on wearable sensors could identify frailty with high agreement with conventional assessments by testing 20-s repetitive elbow flexion and extension. ⋯ The results of this study suggest that a 20-s UEF test is practical in the trauma setting and could be used as a quick measure for predicting adverse events and outcomes among bedbound patients after discharge. Assessing frailty using UEF may assist in objective triage, treatment, and post-discharge decision-making with regard to geriatric trauma patients.
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Participation in activities is associated with a range of positive outcomes in adulthood. Research has shown that pain and physical symptoms are associated with less activity in older adults, whereas higher self-efficacy is associated with more activity. Such research tends to examine cross-sectional or long-term between-person change, limiting the opportunity to explore dynamic within-person processes that unfold over shorter time periods. ⋯ Stable individual differences as well as short-term within-person variation in physical and psychological functioning are associated with day-to-day variation in activity. Between-person associations did not always reflect within-person associations (e.g., for pain). These complex associations may be influenced by a range of factors including the type of activity and how it is defined (e.g., specific activities and their difficulty), the type of physical symptoms experienced, and age.
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Impairment of physical function is a major indicator of frailty. Functional performance tests have been shown to be useful for identification of frailty in older adults. However, these tests are often not translatable into unsupervised and remote monitoring of frailty status at home and/or community settings. ⋯ This study demonstrated that daily number of specific postural transitions such as walk-to-stand and quick sitting could be used for monitoring frailty status by unsupervised monitoring of daily physical activity. Further study is warranted to explore whether tracking the daily number of specific postural transitions is also sensitive to track change in the status of frailty over time.