The Timed Up and Go Test as a Measure of Frailty in Urologic Practice.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prevalence of frailty, a known predictor of poor outcomes, among patients presenting to an academic nononcologic urology practice and to examine whether frailty differs among patients who did and did not undergo urologic surgery.

METHODS: The Timed Up and Go Test (TUGT), a parsimonious measure of frailty, was administered to patients ages ≥65. The TUGT, demographic data, urologic diagnoses, and procedural history were abstracted from the medical record into a prospective database. TUGT times were categorized as nonfrail (≤10 seconds), prefrail (11-14 seconds), and frail (≥15 seconds). These times were evaluated across age and urologic diagnoses and compared between patients who did and did not undergo urologic surgery using chi-square and t tests.

RESULTS: The TUGT was recorded for 78.9% of patient visits from December 2015 to May 2016. For 1089 patients, average age was 73.3 ± 6.3 years; average TUGT time was 11.6 ± 6.0 seconds; 30.0% were categorized as prefrail and 15.2% as frail. TUGT times increased with age, with 56.9% of patients age 86 and over categorized as frail. Times varied across diagnoses (highest average TUGT was 14.3 ± 11.9 seconds for patients with urinary tract infections); however, no difference existed between patients who did and did not undergo surgery (P = .94).

CONCLUSION: Among our population, prefrailty and frailty were common, TUGT times increased with age and varied by urologic diagnosis, but did not differ between patients who did and did not undergo urologic surgery, presenting an opportunity to consider frailty in preoperative surgical decision making.