Our study is one of the first to evaluate the impact of the physical and cognitive status on the risk of subsequent events in elderly patients hospitalized for CVD. Overall, 12% of elderly inpatients with CVD were diagnosed with CI, 16% with PF, and 8% with CF. Those who were older with a lower education level tended to exhibit CF rather than PF, and the PA level was lower than that of CI. We found that elderly patients with HF, DM, a history of stroke, non-married status, severe MNA-SF, and low FT3 levels at baseline were more likely to have adverse events than others, but after adjusting for confouders, only HF, cognitive frailty, severe MNA-SF and physical frailty were useful predictors of the short-term prognosis. The significance of physical frailty assessed by the Fried phenotype for predicting non-elective hospital readmission or death within six months in elderly patients with CVD increased after the diagnosis of cognitive impairment was added. A sensitivity analysis for the association between the MMSE + CDT + SPPB confirmed these results.
The detection of frailty in older patients with CVD is essential for the clinical management and marking therapeutic decisions. General frailty is a multidimensional construction, including physical, mental, social, nutritional and other domains. The most commonly used frailty assessment tools are the Frailty Index, the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), and the Fried phenotype [23]. Several studies have shown that the Frailty Index has a higher predictive ability of adverse clinical outcomes than other frailty measurements in both hospital and community settings, and it has a good validity including all concepts of frailty; however, its greatest limitation is its time-consuming nature [24]. The CFS is a rather simple semi-quantitative assessment tool based on clinical judgement but lacks an objective measurement of mobility, muscle strength, and any indices of nutritional status, which might reduce its reproducibility and usability [25]. Therefore, the Fried phenotype, which is a brief interview combined with simple physical tests that is easy to administer, seems to be the most acceptable choice; it is also used for the Cardiovascular Health Study scale [16], which is more suitable for assessing CVD patients. Unfortunately, the Fried phenotype does not include psychosocial components of frailty [24]. In the assessment of generally frail patients, adding appropriate cognitive assessment tools to the Fried phenotype may be important and useful.
Mild cognitive impairment can be described as a transition phase between normal aging and dementia. CVD affects the development of cognitive impairment in the elderly. Thrombo-embolic and/or reduction of cardiac output appear to be the main mechanisms involved in the determination of cognitive impairment in elderly patients with CVD, which involves common diseases such as CAD, hypertension, and DM [26]. Cognitive impairment is a risk factor for adverse events in patients with CVD [10]. The most widely used tool for evaluating cognitive impairment is the MMSE [27]. However, the MMSE is language-based and considered to be influenced by the level of education. The CDT is one of the most widely used cognitive screening instruments for dementia [28], and it can be performed without being influenced by the patient’s level of language or education and is less affected by depression than other tests [29]. To our knowledge, the present study is the first to formally assess the MMSE + CDT as a predictor of clinically relevant outcomes in patients with CVD.
We found that cognitive impairment alone cannot predict non-elective hospital readmission or death in elderly inpatients with CVD, showing this ability only when combined with physical frailty. There are several possible reasons for the effect of cognitive frailty on adverse events. First, patients in the CF group had a high proportion of multiple diseases coexisting and more serious basic diseases than those in the CI group. Second, cognitive frailty patients have great difficulty with self-care management and compliance [26]. Third, the lack of social support was apparent among the cognitive frailty subjects, and social support has a proximal relationship with depressive mood, anxiety, impatience, and behavioral suppression, which may reduce an individual’s desire to participate in social activities and impede their access to a necessary social support system, thereby resulting in an increased risk of disabilities among older adults [30]. Fourth, sarcopenia is closely related to cognitive frailty. Sarcopenia is a progressive and generalized skeletal muscle disorder involving the accelerated loss of muscle mass and function that is associated with increased adverse outcomes [31]. Sarcopenia and physical frailty are closely related and contribute to cognitive frailty. In fact, many of the adverse outcomes of physical frailty may be mediated by sarcopenia, which may be considered the biological substrate for the development of frailty [32]. Cognitive impairment reinforces the neuronal changes in the central nervous system leading to changes in the levels and activity of neurotransmitters, which lead to a reduction in motor units and in the ability to maintain muscle activation, which might be related to sarcopenia [33].
We described the values of AUC in MMSE, MMSE + CDT, Fried phenotype, MMSE + CDT + Fried phenotype, and MMSE + CDT + Fried phenotype + MNA-SF, in order to assess the differing effects of the domains on rehospitalization and death. Regarding the AUC values, MMSE alone was insufficient to discriminate readmission, which was inconsistent with previous findings [34, 35]. The AUC value obtained for MMSE + CDT in all patients was 0.59. The CDT and MMSE reflect different cognitive characteristics, which may have affected the results [36]. The MMSE and CDT are both relatively fast, simple, and useful tools for screening cognitive impairment. The diagnostic accuracy may be higher when the MMSE is conducted along with the CDT than when conducted as a single test. Recent studies concluded that an indicator of frailty in routine care is related to readmission or mortality in patients [37, 38]. Vidan et al. evaluated 450 patients ≥70 years old and found frailty to be an independent predictor of 12-month readmission [39]. The AUC value obtained for the Fried phenotype in all patients was 0.64, which was consistent with previous studies [40, 41]. In a longitudinal cohort study that examined the effect of frailty phenotype and cognitive impairment on mortality in community for a five years, frailty and cognitive impairment (MMSE <21) were significant predictors of mortality [42]. Accounting for cognitive impairment in the physical frailty phenotype will allow for the better prediction of non-elective hospital readmission or death in elderly inpatients with CVD in the short term.
Malnutrition and nutritional imbalance are thought to be strongly associated with the development of frailty and cognitive impairment due to both the biological and behavioral effects of diet [43]. The two main pathways to malnutrition in elderly patients are anorexia of aging and disease-related energy needs after a stressful event [44]. The MNA-SF has been validated for the diagnosis of malnutrition and prediction of clinical outcomes. In our study, frailty with a normal or impaired cognition was associated with a poor nutritional status. We also found that a malnourished status which was assessed by severe MNA-SF (≤7), was associated with an increased risk of non-elective hospital readmission or death in elderly inpatients with CVD. However, adding MNA-SF to MMSE + CDT + Fried phenotype did not increase the predictive value. The physical and cognitive component domains are the main aspects to consider when evaluating generally frail patients, while the nutritional domain assessment may play a secondary role in predicting non-elective hospital readmission or death in the short term.
In the present study, the suitability of combining MMSE and CDT for identifying individuals with adverse outcomes was examined. Our results showed that MMSE + CDT was not ideal for discrimination among total patients. However, it was relatively useful when combined additionally with the Fried phenotype for identifying adverse outcomes in older male patients with CVD. The AUC value obtained for the MMSE + CDT + Fried phenotype in all patients was 0.65, and the AUC for men was 0.71, while that for women was 0.60.
We believe that several factors contributed to these gender differences. First, the number of elderly non-married women was greater than that of men, especially in the CI and CF groups; the loss of a spouse is associated with a marked decline in memory in older adults and has an independent effect on memory functioning [45], which causes them to further lose the support of their families and makes it less convenient for them to be hospitalized and seek medical advice. Second, elderly women are less economically independent, which leads to difficulty in seeking medical help, and their exposure to stimulating environments might be limited. Finally, some studies have shown that women with cognitive impairment have greater longitudinal rates of cognitive and functional progression than men, the conjecture being that this might induce changes in carers’ attitudes to protect the women [46]. Further research on gender differences and adverse outcomes should be performed in the future.
Study limitations
Several limitations associated with the present study warrant mention. First, this was a cross-sectional study with a short-term follow-up, and there were four deaths, so the guidance concerning the short-term prognosis focused on the non-elective hospital readmission; however, a longer-term follow-up study in this population is currently being conducted by our group. Second, these data were collected from patients at one hospital, so the results may not necessarily be directly transferable to patients from different locations, although this approach allowed for the more convenient follow-up of these patients. Third, the study only included hospitalized patients, so nothing can be inferred from this study about elderly people living in the community. In addition, the small sample size is the main reason why we did not conduct a subgroup analysis of single diseases. Fourth, with the limited length of stay, we did not have an accurate assessment of sarcopenia. Finally, the combination of MMSE and CDT is not a very sensitive means of detecting subtle impairments of cognitive function, so we may have underestimated the proportion of people with cognitive impairment in the present study.