Gait Velocity and Chair Sit-Stand-Sit Performance Improves Current Frailty-Status Identification

Frailty is characterized by a loss of functionality and is expected to affect 9.9% of people aged 65 and over. Here, current frailty classification is compared with a collection of selected kinematic parameters. A total of 718 elderly subjects (319 males and 399 females; age: 75.4 +/- 6.1 years), volunteered to participate in this study and were classified according to Fried's criteria. Both the 30-s chair stand test (CST) and the 3-m walking test were performed and a set of kinematic parameters were obtained from a single inertial unit. A decision tree analysis was used to: 1) identify the most relevant frailty-related parameters and 2) compare validity of this classification. We found that a selected set of parameters from the 30-s CST (i.e., range of movement, acceleration, and power) were better at identifying frailty status than both the actual outcome of the test (i.e., cycles' number) and the normally used criteria (i.e., gait speed). For the pre-frail status, AUC improves from 0.531 using the actual test outcome and 0.516 with gait speed to 0.938 with the kinematic parameters criteria. In practice, this could improve the presyndrome identification and perform the appropriate actions to postpone the progression into the frail status.