COVID & frailty [COVID-19]
Research type
Research Study
Full title
COVID-19 related outcomes for older people living with frailty in acute hospital settings
IRAS ID
289267
Contact name
Simon Conroy
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Leicester
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 2 months, 31 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
Older people have been gravely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic – mortality rates are strongly related to advancing age. Increasingly clinical teams are using the notion of frailty to try and identify older people into those with differing levels of risk of a range of adverse outcomes, including death. In the non-COVID related context, frailty is a powerful discriminator, with increased levels of frailty linked with longer stays in hospital, as well as higher rates of death. However in older people with COVID-19 infections, this relationship is less clear, with a range of hospital based studies reporting conflicting levels of risk for older people with frailty. The aim of this work is to assess the relationship between frailty and COVID-19 in older people admitted to acute hospitals in England.
We will use data from the whole of England, which will be stored and managed within the NHS – no patient data will leave the NHS safe haven and none will be seen by members of the research team, other than an NHS England analyst. We will describe the links between COVID-19 and a range of hospital outcomes – length of stay, critical care admission and death, taking account of other important factors that might contribute to these outcomes, such as ethnicity and socioeconomic deprivation.
The results of the study will inform clinicians about how best to use the frailty concept when assessing older people with COVID-19, for example in national guidelines that the study team have been involved in preparing: https://www.criticalcarenice.org.uk/.Summary of Results
Frailty appears to be an important risk factor for COVID-19 related deaths, but studies to data have important limitations.
This study examined outcomes for all older people hospitalised with COVID-19 between March 2020 and July 2021, and showed that mortality risk was increased with higher Hospital Frailty Risk Scores.
Any level of elevated frailty risk should be considered an important prognostic marker for older people hospitalised with COVID-19.REC name
London - Fulham Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/HRA/4606
Date of REC Opinion
21 Oct 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion