Vulnerable Elderly Survey 13 as a Screening Method for Frailty in Polish Elderly Surgical Patient - Prospective Study

• Authors: Jakub Kenig , Piotr Richter , Beata Żychiewicz , Urszula Olszewska
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Vulnerable Elders Survey (VES-13) is a simple function based frailty screening tool that can be also administered by the nonclinical personnel within 5 minutes and has been validated in the out- and in patient clinic and acute medical care settings. The aim of the study was to validate theaccuracy of the VES-13 screening method for predicting the frailty syndrome based on a CGA in polish surgical patients. Material and methods. We included prospectively 106 consecutive patients ≥65, that qualify for abdominal surgery (both due to oncological and benign reasons), at the tertiary referral hospital.We evaluated the diagnostic performance of VES-13 score comparing to the results from the CGA, accepted as the gold standard for identifying at risk frail elderly patients. Results. The prevalence of frailty as diagnosed by CGA was 59.4%. There was significantly higher number of frail patients in the oncological group (78% vs. 31%; p<0.01). According to the frailty screening methods, the frailty prevalence was 45.3%. The VES-13 score had a 60% sensitivity and 78% specificity in detecting frailty syndrome. The positive and negative predictive value was 81% and 57%, respectively. The overall predictive capacity was intermediate (AUC=0.69) Conclusions. At present, the VES-13 screening tool for older patients cannot replace the comprehensive geriatric assessment; this is due to the insufficient discriminative power to select patients for further assessment. It might be helpful in a busy clinical practice and in facilities that do not have trained personal for geriatric assessment.

Keywords

EN

Vulnerable Elders Survey; VES-13; comprehensive geriatric assessment; surgery in the elderly

• Journal: Polish Journal of Surgery
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 86
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 126-131

Dates

published

1 - 3 - 2014

received

24 - 2 - 2014

online

25 - 4 - 2014

Contributors

author

Jakub Kenig

• 3rd Department of General Surgery, Jagiellonian Univeristy Medical College in Cracow Kierownik,

author

Piotr Richter

• 3rd Department of General Surgery, Jagiellonian Univeristy Medical College in Cracow Kierownik

author

Beata Żychiewicz

• 3rd Department of General Surgery, Jagiellonian Univeristy Medical College in Cracow Kierownik

author

Urszula Olszewska

• 3rd Department of General Surgery, Jagiellonian Univeristy Medical College in Cracow Kierownik

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/pjs-2014-0024