No Difference in the Phenotypic Expression of Frailty among Elderly Patients Recently Diagnosed with Cancer vs Cancer Free Patients

Objectives To examine frailty determinants differences in patients with a recent diagnosis of cancer compared to non-cancer patients among older adult. Revealing those differences will allow us to individualize the exact frailty management in those patients diagnosed with cancer. Design This is an observational cross-sectional, monocentric study. Setting Patients were evaluated at the Geriatric Frailty Clinic (GFC), in the Toulouse University Hospital, France, between October 2011 and February 2016. Participants 1996 patients aged 65 and older were included (1578 patients without cancer and 418 patients with solid and hematological cancer recently diagnosed). Measurements Frailty was established according to the frailty phenotype. The frailty phenotype measures five components of frailty: weight loss, exhaustion, low physical activity, weakness and slow gait. Frailty phenotype was categorized as robust, pre-frail and frail. Results In a multinomial logistic regression, cancer, compared to the non-cancer group, is not associated with an increased likelihood of being classified as pre frail (RRR 0.9, 95% CI [0.5; 1.6], p 0.9) or frail (RRR 1.2, 95% CI [0.7; 2.0], p 0.4) rather than robust. When considering each Fried criterion, a significant higher odd of weight loss was observed in older patients with cancer compared to the non-cancer patients (OR 2.3, 95% CI [1.8; 3.0], p <0.001) but no statistically significant differences was found among the four other Fried criteria. Sensitivity analysis on the frailty index showed that cancer was not associated with a higher FI score compared to non-cancer (β 0.002, 95%CI [-0.009; 0.01], p 0.6). Conclusion In this real-life study evaluating elderly patients with and without cancer, we didn’t confirm our hypothesis, in fact we found that cancer was not associated with frailty severity using both a phenotypic model and a deficit accumulation approach. Cancer may contribute, at least additively, to the development of frailty, like any other comorbidity, rather than a global underlying condition of vulnerability.