Objective: Recent studies indicate that the use of frailty assessment methods is an important factor in improving in-hospital mortality prognosis in elderly patients, especially in cases of acute infections such as community-acquired pneumonia. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the predictive value of the simplified clinical frailty scale (s-CFS) for in-hospital mortality among elderly patients with community-acquired pneumonia.
Materials and methods: A prospective observational study with in-hospital follow-up was conducted on 229 patients aged ≥60 years who were diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia and admitted to the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Thong Nhat Hospital. The prognostic performance of the s-CFS for predicting in-hospital mortality was evaluated using sensitivity, specificity, and the area under the ROC curve (AUC).
Results: From August 2024 to March 2025, one hundred sixty-nine patients (73,8%) were diagnosed with frailty. The in-hospital mortality rate was 6,1%. s-CFS has a predictive value for in-hospital mortality with AUC = 0,718 (p = 0,004).
Conclusion: The simplified clinical frailty scale is a simple and practical tool for predicting mortality and may be recommended for use in clinical practice.