Abstract
Previous studies have shown that frail older inpatients, with a high rate of hospital readmission and in-hospital mortality, benefit from a special postacute treatment in specialized geriatric rehabilitation. The well known short physical performance battery (SPPB) is routinely used for physical performance measurements in these rehabilitation hospitals in Germany. While for community-dwelling persons the SPPB has been shown to allow prediction of disability institutionalization and mortality its predictive validity has not been evaluated jet in a geriatric rehabilitation setting. Routine data from a quality registry of 12251 geriatric inpatient rehabilitants in Baden Württemberg, Germany (KODAS database, 2012–2014), were retrospectively analyzed using the Mantel-Haenzel chi-square statistic and multiple logistic-regression analysis adjusted to age, sex and number of active comorbities. The mean age was 82 years and the mean SPPB sum score at admission 2,82. Beside a not normal distribution, the SPPB shows significant differences in the mean Barthel-Indices (Disability Outcome) and for nursing home admissions, acute hospital admissions and mortality over the four major SPPB subgroups. Compared with older community-dwelling persons, geriatric rehabilitation inpatients had a substantially lower SPPB sum score with a pronounced floor effect. Nevertheless it can predict overall markers of disease and mortality. The present study, shows that the SPPB is associated with multimorbidity at risk of disability, nursing home admissions, severe complications and mortality in a short term follow up.