Abstract
Evidence on the efficiency of pharmacotherapy is especially scarce for frail older adults, which are particularly exposed to extensive changes in the medication due to clinical needs. Adequate studies (RCTs and non-randomized trials) addressing this population are lacking, and observational studies frequently show heterogeneous results. One explanation for this heterogeneity could be differences in the conceptualization of frailty and its discriminative capacity across many different available assessments. In our project “Medication and QoL in Old Age” we developed evidence maps for highly prevalent diseases in frail older adults, starting with arterial hypertension and major depression. We set cut off points for the identification of frail persons using several frailty-, vulnerability-, and CGA-related scores used in trials. We aimed i) to gain a better understanding of the effect of pharmacotherapy across the identified frailty levels and II) to build updated evidence maps for drug therapy based on operationalized criteria for frailty.