Journal of the American Medical Directors Association
Original StudySarcopenia Screened With SARC-F Questionnaire Is Associated With Quality of Life and 4-Year Mortality
Section snippets
Methods
We conducted a hospital-based, prospective cohort study in Taipei City, Taiwan. The population of interest was community-dwelling senior citizens aged 55 years and older. The follow-up period was 4 years, starting from the first year telephone survey (2011, baseline year) and ended in the fifth year of follow-up (2015, year 4), as shown in Figure 1. The detailed methodology was described previously.17, 18 This study was approved by Taipei City Hospital Institutional Review Board
Results
There were 670 participants with a mean age of 76.1 (standard deviation 6.36) years. One-half were men (n = 340, 50.7%). The distribution of the SARC-F scores was right skewed (Figure 2). The majority had SARC-F score of 0 (n = 399, 59.6%). The prevalence of sarcopenia was 6.1% (n = 41) (Table 1). Of the 5 items of SARC-F, loss of strength has the highest prevalence (27.6%) (Appendix 1).
Participants of the validation group (n = 135, 20.1% of total) had a mean age of 74.1 years (standard
Discussion
We observed that among Chinese older people in Taiwan, SARC-F score was inversely associated with grip strength and percentage of skeletal muscle mass. Sarcopenia screened with SARC-F was associated with QOL, 4-year mortality, hospitalization, and emergency care use. SARC-F can predict robust clinical outcomes, such as mortality, up to 4 years.
Conclusions
Among community-dwelling older people in Taiwan, sarcopenia screened using SARC-F is associated with subsequent QOL, emergency care use, hospitalization, and 4-year mortality. SARC-F can serve as a quick screening tool of sarcopenia.
Sarcopenia is a major cause of frailty.3 Considering sarcopenia as a geriatric syndrome allows us to request its recognition and to implement a clinical and public health approach.9 All persons 60 years and older should be screened for sarcopenia and treated when
Acknowledgements
We thank Pf. Li Cao for providing the Chinese version of SARC-F. We thank the assistants Ginger Yeh, Yu-Hui Yang, Tracy Chuang, Arlene Yang, Rui-Yun Li, Katie Wu, Ping-Yen Tsai and Hua Chung for their efforts in data collection and managerial support.
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This work was supported by the research project of Ministry of Science and Technology, 10F, No.10, Sec.4, Ren-ai Rd., Taipei City, Taiwan (ROC).
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.