Abstract: Objective: To compare the frailty screening ability of the Edmonton Frailty Scale (EFS) and Groningen Frailty Indicator (GFI) among elderly people in nursing homes. Methods: A convenience sampling method was used to select 216 elderly people from 8 elderly institutions in Wenzhou from May to September 2020 for the study, and data were collected by using the general condition questionnaire, Frailty Phenotype (FP), EFS and GFI. The assessment ability of EFS and GFI were compared by ROC curve and Bayes discriminant analysis using FP as criteria. Results: The incidence of frailty was 35.2%, 40.3% and 43.1% for FP, EFS and GFI, respectively; the Kappa values of the consistency test between EFS and FP, GFI and FP were 0.460 and 0.430 (both P<0.001); the ROC curves under the EFS and GFI, using FP as the reference area was 0.805 and 0.801, respectively, with an area difference of 0.004 (Z=0.090, P=0.894), the sensitivity of EFS and GFI was 0.711 and 0.645, and the best critical value was 4.5 for both; the cross-validation accuracy was 74.5% and 72.7% for EFS and GFI, respectively. Conclusion: Both EFS and GFI can be applied to the frailty assessment of the elderly in nursing homes, and the similarity of screening ability between the two scales is moderate. EFS has higher sensitivity than GFI and is more suitable for frailty screening of elderly people in nursing homes.

Key words: Edmonton Frailty Scale; Groningen Frailty Indicator; nursing home; frailty; elderly