The continued increase in life expectancy is one of the most significant achievements of these years in Europe: while in 1960 life expectancy was 73.6 years for women and 67 years for men, in 2010 it was significantly higher, respectively 84.8 years and 78.1 years. Total life expectancy is increasing, but disability-free life expectancy is declining.
Thus, the years of life gained would now be accompanied by functional limitations, activity restrictions and degradation of autonomy. One of the challenges of our society, promoted as part of the European Innovation Partnership for Active and Healthy Aging as well as in the National Health Strategy 2018-2022, is the prevention of disabilities and age-related dependence by ensuring that our patients can not only live longer, but also lead a healthy, active and independent life.
The vast majority of older people live at home without significant disability, including in the most advanced age groups. These elderly pauci- or mono-pathological persons evolve in a manner comparable to younger adults in acute illness, hospitalization or during physical and / or psychological stress, the so-called "fragile" elderly unmask an underlying state of vulnerability and may enter into dependency.
In 2011, the French Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SFGG) adopted the following definition of frailty: "Frailty is a clinical syndrome. It reflects a decrease in physiological capacity reserve which alters the mechanisms of adaptation to stress. Its clinical expression is modulated by comorbidities and by psychological, social, economic and behavioral. Frailty syndrome is a marker of risk of mortality and pejorative events, including disabilities, falls, hospitalization and institutionalization. Age is a major determinant of frailty \[…\]. Addressing the determinants of frailty can reduce or delay its consequences. Thus, fragility would be part of a process potentially reversible ".
According to the latest data from the SHARE survey (Survey on Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe) which is a multidisciplinary longitudinal Survey involving more than 80,000 Europeans aged over 50 with collection of data on health status, social situation (family, mutual aid, social networks) and economic (employment, retirement, wealth), frailty represents in France 3.2% of people aged 50 to 64, and 15% of people over 65. Other data of interest, 43% of people over 65 are "pre-fragile".
Thus, being able to identify fragility early is a major issue in order to implement corrective actions and avoid or at least delay entry into addiction. To do so, several simple primary care screening tools have been developed, like self-assessment such as the FiND8 self-questionnaire or tools intended to be used by physicians such as the FRAIL tool from Morley or the tool for identifying the frailty of the gerontopole of Toulouse.
These screening strategies remain mainly for the time in the medical field while home care services (SAD), daily actors in the elderly person life, are still too little involved. The development of Home Care Frailty Scale, a 29-item multidimensional assessment tool for the risk of decline to dependency, based on data from the interRAI (Resident Assessment Instrument), however, demonstrates that SAD represent an interesting screening strategy.
