Technologies for frailty, comorbidity, and multimorbidity in older adults: a systematic review of research designs

BMC Medical Research Methodology

Research

Cosimo Tuena¹  Silvia Cavedoni¹  Elisa Pedroli²  Marco Stramba-Badiale³  Antonio Greco⁴  Francesca Romana Greco⁴  Alessia Gallucci⁵  Pietro D. Trimarchi⁵  Fabrizio Giunco⁵  Carlo Abbate⁵  Fabrizia Lattanzio⁶ 

[1]Applied Technology for Neuro‑Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

[2]Applied Technology for Neuro‑Psychology Lab, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

[3]Faculty of Psychology, University of eCampus, Novedrate, Italy

[4]Department of Geriatrics and Cardiovascular Medicine, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy

[5]Geriatric Unit, Department of Medical Sciences, IRCCS ‘‘Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza’’, San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy

[6]IRCCS Fondazione Don Carlo Gnocchi, Milan, Italy

[7]Scientific Direction, IRCCS INRCA, Ancona, Italy

关键词: Frailty;    Health technology;    Rehabilitation;    Aging;    Research methodology;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12874-023-01971-z

 received in 2022-09-07, accepted in 2023-06-09,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundFrailty, neurodegeneration and geriatric syndromes cause a significant impact at the clinical, social, and economic level, mainly in the context of the aging world. Recently, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), virtual reality tools, and machine learning models have been increasingly applied to the care of older patients to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and interventions. However, so far, the methodological limitations of studies in this field have prevented to generalize data to real-word. This review systematically overviews the research designs used by studies applying technologies for the assessment and treatment of aging-related syndromes in older people.MethodsFollowing the PRISMA guidelines, records from PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science were systematically screened to select original articles in which interventional or observational designs were used to study technologies’ applications in samples of frail, comorbid, or multimorbid patients.ResultsThirty-four articles met the inclusion criteria. Most of the studies used diagnostic accuracy designs to test assessment procedures or retrospective cohort designs to build predictive models. A minority were randomized or non-randomized interventional studies. Quality evaluation revealed a high risk of bias for observational studies, while a low risk of bias for interventional studies.ConclusionsThe majority of the reviewed articles use an observational design mainly to study diagnostic procedures and suffer from a high risk of bias. The scarce presence of methodologically robust interventional studies may suggest that the field is in its infancy. Methodological considerations will be presented on how to standardize procedures and research quality in this field.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s) 2023. corrected publication 2023

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