Power Frail

Evaluates muscle power and frailty in older people

PowerFrail is the first scientifically-based application that allows you to assess the muscle power and frailty of older people in a simple way, also providing individualized recommendations on what content should be improved and what type of physical activity should be done to achieve healthy levels.

PowerFrail has been developed thanks to the collaboration of the GENUD Toledo Research Group (Department of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences; University of Castilla-La Mancha) and the group of the Toledo Study for Healthy Aging (Hospital Virgen del Valle; Toledo Hospital Complex, SESCAM), both belonging to the Biomedical Research Networking Center on Frailty and Healthy Aging (CIBERFES) of the Carlos III Health Institute.

PowerFrail allows you to assess muscle power and frailty in a fast, simple and reliable way thanks to two scientifically validated tools: 1) The STS power test, which assess muscle power of the lower extremities during the exercise of standing up and sitting down from the chair (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30179662/); and 2) The FTS-5 frailty test, which assess the degree of frailty through 5 simple items: body mass index, balance, manual strength, walking speed and physical activity (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32005416/).

The World Health Organization has stated that the main objective of health systems with respect to older people should be the maintenance and development of their functional capacity. Both muscle power and frailty are two of the most relevant aspects for the achievement of healthy aging by older people. Thus, low levels of muscle power and a high degree of frailty are closely related to a multitude of adverse events in the elderly: falls, dependence, hospitalization and even death.

Therefore, the timely detection of those elderly people at risk of low muscle power and frailty should be a priority, with the aim of developing an approach plan that allows reversing the development of an illness or adverse event in the group of older people.

Thanks to PowerFrail you will be able to detect whether a patient/subject has deteriorated muscle power and whether he/she is frail. Moreover, thanks to a decision algorithm, PowerFrail will provide you with individualized recommendations for physical exercise based on the specific deficit presented.

PowerFrail is an application designed to be implemented in the day-to-day practice of geriatrics but can also be used by any professional working with older people.