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CFAI‐Plus: Adding cognitive frailty as a new domain to the comprehensive frailty assessment instrument
Author(s) -
De Roeck Ellen Elisa,
Dury Sarah,
De Witte Nico,
De Donder Liesbeth,
Bjerke Maria,
De Deyn Peter Paul,
Engelborghs Sebastiaan,
Dierckx Eva
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
international journal of geriatric psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.28
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1099-1166
pISSN - 0885-6230
DOI - 10.1002/gps.4875
Subject(s) - cognition , cronbach's alpha , dementia , gerontology , psychology , cognitive decline , multivariate analysis , clinical psychology , medicine , psychometrics , psychiatry , disease , pathology
Objectives Cognitive frailty is characterized by the presence of cognitive impairment in exclusion of dementia. In line with other frailty domains, cognitive frailty is associated with negative outcomes. The Comprehensive Frailty Assessment Instrument (CFAI) measures 4 domains of frailty, namely physical, psychological, social, and environmental frailty. The absence of cognitive frailty is a limitation. Method An expert panel selected 6 questions from the Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline that were, together with the CFAI and the Montreal cognitive assessment administered to 355 older community dwelling adults (mean age = 77). Results After multivariate analysis, 2 questions were excluded. All the questions from the original CFAI were implemented in a principal component analysis together with the 4 cognitive questions, showing that the 4 cognitive questions all load on 1 factor, representing the cognitive domain of frailty. By adding the cognitive domain to the CFAI, the reliability of the adapted CFAI (CFAI‐Plus), remains good (Cronbach's alpha: .767). Conclusions This study showed that cognitive frailty can be added to the CFAI without affecting its good psychometric properties. In the future, the CFAI‐Plus needs to be validated in an independent cohort, and the interaction with the other frailty domains needs to be studied.