Prevalence of frailty among patients with inflammatory bowel disease and its association with clinical outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Studies have reported frailty as an independent risk factor of mortality in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, no systematic review and meta-analysis has been conducted to determine the relationship of frailty and IBD. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of frailty in patients with IBD and the impact of frailty on the clinical prognosis of these patients. METHODS: We systematically searched PubMed, Ovid (Medline), Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library from database inception until October 2022. This systematic review included observational studies describing IBD and frailty. We performed meta-analysis for the frailty prevalence in patients with IBD. We analyzed primary outcomes (mortality) and secondary outcomes (infections, hospitalizations, readmission, and IBD-related surgery). RESULTS: Nine studies with a total of 1,495,695 participants were included in our meta-analysis. The prevalence of frailty was 18% in patients with IBD. The combined effect analysis showed that frail patients with IBD had a higher risk of mortality (adjusted hazard ratio = 2.25, 95% confidence interval: 1.11–4.55) than non-frail patients with IBD. The hazard ratio for infections (HR = 1.23, 0.94–1.60), hospitalizations (HR = 1.72, 0.88–3.36), readmission (HR = 1.21, 1.17–1.25) and IBD-related surgery (HR = 0.78, 0.66–0.91) in frail patients with IBD. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated that frailty is a significant independent predictor of mortality in patients with IBD. Our work supports the importance of implementing frailty screening upon admission in patients with IBD. More prospective studies are needed to investigate the influence of frailty on patients with IBD and improve the poor prognosis of patients with frailty and IBD. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12876-022-02620-3.