Prediction of functional decline in community-dwelling older persons in general practice: a cohort study

BACKGROUND: A first step to offer community-dwelling older persons proactive care is to identify those at risk of functional decline within a year. This study investigates the predictive value of registered information, questionnaire and GP-opinion on functional decline. METHODS: In this cohort study, embedded within the ISCOPE-trial, participants (≥75 years) completed the ISCOPE-screening questionnaire on four health domains. GPs gave their opinion on vulnerability of participants. Functional status was measured at baseline and 12 months (Groningen Activities Restriction Scale [GARS]). The outcome was functional decline (death, nursing home admission, 10% with greatest functional decline). The predictive value of pre-selected variables (age, sex, polypharmacy, multimorbidity, living situation; GPs’ opinion on vulnerability, number of domains with problems [ISCOPE-score]) was compared with the area under the curves (AUC) for logistic regression models. RESULTS: 2018 of the 2211 participants (median age 82.1 years [IQR 78.8–86.5], 68.0% female, median GARS 31 [IQR 24–41]) were visited at 12 months (median GARS 34 [IQR 26–44]). 394 participants (17.8%) had functional decline (148 died, 45 nursing home admissions, 201 with greatest functional decline). The AUC for age and sex was 0.602, increasing to 0.620 (p = 0.029) with polypharmacy, multimorbidity and living situation. The GPs’ opinion added more (AUC 0.672, p < 0.001) than the ISCOPE-score (AUC 0.649, p = 0.007). AUC with all variables was 0.686 (p = 0.016), and 0.643 for GPs’ opinion alone. CONCLUSIONS: The GPs’ opinion and ISCOPE-score improve this prediction model for functional decline based on readily available variables. GPs could identify older patients for further assessment with their clinical judgement. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Netherlands trial register, NTR1946. Registered 10 August 2009. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12877-018-0826-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.