Usefulness of the Clinical Frailty Scale in patients with end-stage kidney disease

Background The frailty index (FI) is commonly used to estimate frailty in end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) patients. The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) is a less time-consuming alternative. We aimed to determine the test performance of the CFS for pre-dialysis and dialysis patients and patients receiving conservative therapy from the Dialysis Centre Apeldoorn.Methods In this cross-sectional study, haemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, pre-dialysis patients and patients receiving conservative therapy from the Dialysis Centre Apeldoorn were included and subjected to frailty assessment. Nephrologists not familiar with the CFS completed the frailty score after medical consultation. The sensitivity, specificity and area under the curve (AUC) of the CFS were determined. The FI was used as the gold standard.Results Included were 144 patients, of whom 60 (41.7%) were considered frail according to the FI. The mean age was 67.4 +/- 13.5 years and 56 (38.9%) were female. The cut-off point of the CFS for 'vulnerable' (CFS >= 4) had a sensitivity of 63.3%, a specificity of 81.0% and an AUC of 0.72. The cut-off point of the CFS for 'frail' (CFS >= 5) had a sensitivity of 50.0%, a specificity of 91.7% and an AUC of 0.71.Conclusions The CFS is a quick and easy-to-use tool for the determination of frailty in ESKD patients with a high prevalence of frailty. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of the CFS in the present study was considered too low to implement into daily clinical practice. The sensitivity might be increased by training nephrologists in the use of the CFS.