{"doi":"10.1093/gerona/glaa291","title":"Beyond Chronological Age: Frailty and Multimorbidity Predict In-Hospital Mortality in Patients With Coronavirus Disease 2019","abstract":"BACKGROUND: We evaluated whether frailty and multimorbidity predict in-hospital mortality in patients with COVID-19 beyond chronological age. METHOD: A total of 165 patients admitted from March 8th to April 17th, 2020, with COVID-19 in an acute geriatric ward in Italy were included. Predisease frailty was assessed with the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS). Multimorbidity was defined as the co-occurrence of ≥2 diseases in the same patient. The hazard ratio (HR) of in-hospital mortality as a function of CFS score and number of chronic diseases in the whole population and in those aged 70+ years were calculated. RESULTS: Among the 165 patients, 112 were discharged, 11 were transferred to intensive care units, and 42 died. Patients who died were older (81.0 vs 65.2 years, p < .001), more frequently multimorbid (97.6 vs 52.8%; p < .001), and more likely frail (37.5 vs 4.1%; p < .001). Less than 2.0% of patients without multimorbidity and frailty, 28% of those with multimorbidity only, and 75% of those with both multimorbidity and frailty died. Each unitary increment in the CFS was associated with a higher risk of in-hospital death in the whole sample (HR = 1.3; 95% CI = 1.05-1.62) and in patients aged 70+ years (HR = 1.29; 95% CI = 1.04-1.62), whereas the number of chronic diseases was not significantly associated with higher risk of death. The CFS addition to age and sex increased mortality prediction by 9.4% in those aged 70+ years. CONCLUSIONS: Frailty identifies patients with COVID-19 at risk of in-hospital death independently of age. Multimorbidity contributes to prognosis because of the very low probability of death in its absence.","journal":"The Journals of Gerontology Series A","year":2020,"id":54040,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":109,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8982,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":277112,"name":"Alberto Zucchelli","orcid":"0000-0001-5992-8506","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277113,"name":"Davide Liborio Vetrano","orcid":"0000-0002-3099-4830","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279716,"name":"Andrea Armellini","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277114,"name":"Emanuele Botteri","orcid":"0000-0002-6414-915X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279717,"name":"Franco Nicosia","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279718,"name":"Giuseppe Romanelli","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279719,"name":"Eva Andrea Beindorf","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":279720,"name":"Paola Giansiracusa","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277115,"name":"Emirena Garrafa","orcid":"0000-0003-4761-6892","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":21956,"name":"Luigi Ferrucci","orcid":"0000-0002-6273-1613","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277116,"name":"Laura Fratiglioni","orcid":"0000-0002-6374-6614","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277117,"name":"Roberto Bernabei","orcid":"0000-0002-9197-004X","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":87177,"name":"Graziano Onder","orcid":"0000-0003-3400-4491","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":277111,"name":"Alessandra Marengoni","orcid":"0000-0002-4851-1825","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":48,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:03:43.037640Z","pmid":"33216846","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}