In our recent study involving 4,265 older adults from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), we assessed the effectiveness of a new 3-item health index (HI) in predicting mortality risk, comparing it with two existing frailty measures. The 3-item HI uses objective measures of blood pressure disorder, reaction time, and gait speed.
What’s significant are the Hazard Ratio (HR) results. In simple terms, HR shows the risk of mortality between groups. The high-risk 3-item HI group had a HR of 5.91 (unadjusted) and 2.06 (fully adjusted), meaning they had almost 6 times and over 2 times higher risk of mortality compared to the low-risk group, respectively. In the case of cardiovascular and respiratory mortality, the High-Risk group’s HR was even higher, at 15.10 (unadjusted) and 5.61 (fully adjusted).
Even after considering various factors, the 3-item HI remained a robust predictor of mortality. It effectively categorises individuals into risk groups, offering a practical tool for clinicians and researchers. With a user-friendly MATLAB App also developed and released, it holds promise for clinical use, potentially surpassing established frailty measures in predicting cardio-respiratory risk.