• Martin Ritt, Julia Isabel Ritt, Cornel Christian Sieber, and Karl-Günter Gaßmann.
• Institute for Biomedicine of Ageing (IBA), Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), Nürnberg; Department of Internal Medicine III (Medicine of Ageing), Geriatrics Centre Erlangen, Hospital of the Congregation of St Francis Sisters of Vierzehnheiligen, Erlangen.
• Clin Interv Aging. 2017 Jan 1; 12: 293-304.

BackgroundStudies evaluating and comparing the power of frailty, comorbidity, and disability instruments, together and in parallel, for predicting mortality are limited.ObjectiveThis study aimed to evaluate and compare the measures of frailty, comorbidity, and disability in predicting 1-year mortality in geriatric inpatients.DesignProspective cohort study.Patients And SettingA total of 307 inpatients aged ≥65 years in geriatric wards of a general hospital participated in the study.MeasurementsThe patients were evaluated in relation to different frailty, comorbidity, and disability instruments during their hospital stays. These included three frailty (the seven-category Clinical Frailty Scale [CFS-7], a 41-item frailty index [FI], and the FRAIL scale), two comorbidity (the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale for Geriatrics [CIRS-G] and the comorbidity domain of the FI [Comorbidity-D-FI]), and two disability instruments (disability in basic activities of daily living [ADL-Katz] and the instrumental and basic activities of daily living domains of the FI [IADL/ADL-D-FI]). The patients were followed-up over 1 year.ResultsUsing FI, CIRS-G, Comorbidity-D-FI, and ADL-Katz, this study identified a patient group with a high (≥50%) 1-year mortality rate in all of the patients and the two patient subgroups (ie, patients aged 65-82 years and ≥83 years). The CFS-7, FI, FRAIL scale, CIRS-G, Comorbidity-D-FI, and IADL/ADL-D-FI (analyzed as full scales) revealed useful discriminative accuracy for 1-year mortality (ie, an area under the curve >0.7) in all the patients and the two patient subgroups (all P<0.001). Thereby, CFS-7 (in all patients and the two patient subgroups) and FI (in the subgroup of patients aged ≥83 years) showed greater discriminative accuracy for 1-year mortality compared to other instruments (all P<0.05).ConclusionAll the different instruments emerged as suitable tools for risk stratification in geriatric inpatients. Among them, CFS-7, and in those patients aged ≥83 years, also the FI, might most accurately predict 1-year mortality in the aforementioned group of individuals.

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