Systematic reviewEffect of Exercise on Physical Function, Daily Living Activities, and Quality of Life in the Frail Older Adults: A Meta-Analysis
Section snippets
Search Strategy and Identification of Trials
The studies included in the literature review were identified from 6 electronic databases, namely, PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, Chinese Electronic Periodical Service, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library Register of Controlled Trials. Studies published between 2001 and June 2010 were included. We adopted in our search the operational definition of frailty by Fried,4 Rolfson,5 and Speechley6 and colleagues. The following keywords and Medical Subject Headings were used in the search: (frail older adults,
Results
The searches in the electronic databases were performed on June 1, 2010. We retrieved 146 trials, 15 of which were identified after evaluating titles, abstracts, and full texts. Two studies were excluded owing to overlapped participant groups.25, 26 Moreover, 5 trials were excluded, 2 for having incomplete data (1 without raw mean and SD27 and the other without total score of assessment28) and 3 for having PEDro scores lower than 4.29, 30, 31 A total of 8 trials were included in our
Discussion
The meta-analysis performed provided evidence of the effects of exercise on the physical function, the performance in ADLs, and the QOL of the frail older adults. Exercise demonstrated significant benefits of increased gait speed and BBS score and improved performance in ADLs in the frail older adults, and a positive trend was observed in the scores in the mental health component of QOL within 8 included trials.
A significant increase was observed in gait speed after the exercise-training
Conclusions
To summarize, the exercise intervention only slightly affected physical function, mainly by increasing gait speed and BBS score and improving performance in ADLs. Notably, the participants in these trials may be unrepresentative of the total frail older adults population because of those who would have benefited from exercise but were excluded in the trial because of age or other comorbidities that prevented them from exercising. Furthermore, this review does not make clear recommendations
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