A new study published in BMC Medicine suggests that a simple geriatric assessment tool can effectively evaluate the health status and future health risks of older adults, performing comparably to more complex assessment methods.

"Our findings show that measures of physical function, particularly walking speed, play a crucial role in predicting future health outcomes," said lead author Ahmad Abbadi, a PhD student in the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and researcher affiliated with the Aging Research Centre at the Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society at the Karolinska Institutet.

The assessment tool, known as the Health Assessment Tool (HAT), uses a small set of measures that are easy to collect in routine clinical practice. These include an individual's ability to perform daily activities, cognitive function, walking speed, and the number of chronic health conditions.

"Our results indicate that relatively simple tools that capture multiple aspects of health can successfully identify older adults who are at greater risk of future health decline and can support more informed clinical decision-making," said senior author Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga, senior researcher at the Aging Research Centre and director of the TraCeDem research centre at the Karolinska Institutet.

The study also found that several commonly used assessment methods, including some recommended in clinical guidelines, were less effective for predicting certain health outcomes compared with HAT, Intrinsic Capacity (IC), and the Frailty Index.

The researchers emphasize that the findings should be interpreted carefully, as the study participants were generally healthier and more highly educated than the broader older adult population. This may affect how widely the results can be applied to other groups and healthcare settings.

Further details regarding study funding and potential conflicts of interest are available in the original scientific publication.

Source: https://news.ki.se/simple-tools-accurate-in-predicting-older-adults-health