Background: frailty is a common association with aging, multi-factorial in origin and has significant impact on the overall health and functional status of the elderly. Aim: The purpose of this study was to describe the prevalence of frailty in a community dwelling egyptian elderly and examine its associations with sociodemographic and functional characteristics in a representative sample of rural elderly. Methodology: Eighty eight elderly males and females were recruited from a rural district in Dakahlia, Egypt. After aconsent was taken the following was done for each participant:-comprehensive geriatric assessment, history taking and examination including functional and nutritional assessment. Results: among the participants 24(27. 3%) were pre frail and 21(23.9%) were frailby using SOFA score. Assessment of the nutritional status by using mini nutritional assessment (MNA) showed that 24(27.3%) had a risk of malnutrition and 11(12.5%) were malnourished. There was a statistically significant correlation between frailty status and the following: male gender, malnutrition, depression, low performance on MMSE, more dependent state on ADL&IADL and worse performance of up and go test. by regressive analysis male gender and poor performance of up and go tests were statistically significant predictors of frailty. Conclusion& Recommendation: · Frailty is prevalent condition among the studied sample and it exerts bad impact on the functional status of the elderly so functional assessment of the elderly especially frail one is crucial · Up and go test is an emerging important tool to predict frailty · Still the field of frailty among the elderly is lacking and need more efforts to explore its relations more.
