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Abstract
Introduction
Many health care interventions have been developed that aim to improve or maintain the quality of life for frail elderly. A clear overview of these health care interventions for frail elderly and their effects on quality of life is missing.
Purpose
To provide a systematic overview of the effect of health care interventions on quality of life of frail elderly.
Methods
A systematic search was conducted in Embase, Medline (OvidSP), Cochrane Central, Cinahl, PsycInfo and Web of Science, up to and including November 2017. Studies describing health care interventions for frail elderly were included if the effect of the intervention on quality of life was described. The effects of the interventions on quality of life were described in an overview of the included studies.
Results
In total 4,853 potentially relevant articles were screened for relevance, of which 19 intervention studies met the inclusion criteria. The studies were very heterogeneous in the design: measurement of frailty, health care intervention and outcome measurement differ. Health care interventions described were: multidisciplinary treatment, exercise programs, testosterone gel, nurse home visits and acupuncture. Seven of the nineteen intervention studies, describing different health care interventions, reported a statistically significant effect on subdomains of quality of life, two studies reported a statistically significant effect of the intervention on the overall quality of life score. Ten studies reported no statistically significant difference between the intervention and control groups.
Conclusion
Reported effects of health care interventions on frail elderly persons’ quality of life are inconsistent, with most of the studies reporting no differences between the intervention and control groups. As the number of frail elderly persons in the population will continue to grow, it will be important to continue the search for effective health care interventions. Alignment of studies in design and outcome measurements is needed.
Supplementary material
Embase and Medline (OvidSP) search strategies
Embase (Embase and Medline)
(‘frail elderly’/de OR ((frail* AND (elder* OR old* OR aged OR geriatr* OR octogenar*)) OR (impair* NEXT/1 elder*)):ab,ti) AND (‘quality of life’/exp OR ((qualit* NEAR/3 (life OR liv*)) OR QOL OR HRQL):ab,ti)
Medline (OvidSP)
(“Frail Elderly”/OR ((frail* AND (elder* OR old* OR aged OR geriatr* OR octogenar*)) OR (impair* ADJ elder*)). ab,ti.) AND (“Quality of Life”/OR ((qualit* ADJ3 (life OR liv*)) OR QOL OR HRQL).ab,ti.)
Author contributions
All authors contributed toward data analysis, drafting and critically revising the paper, gave final approval of the version to be published, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
Disclosure
The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.