Alberto Zucchelli, geriatrician from Brescia (Italy), associated to the Medical Group at ARC has been awarded with the prize for the best abstract and oral presentation by the scientific board of the Italian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SIGG), during the last national conference in Rome (28 Nov – 1 Dec 2018).
The title of the winning study is “Beyond the chronological age: comparing the prognostic value of different health indicators in older adults”. In this longitudinal study Alberto Zucchelli and colleagues investigated how five commonly used geriatric indices perform in predicting mortality, hospitalization and health care services use in the SNAC-K population.
The Health Assessment Tool (HAT), walking speed, the frailty index, a multimorbidity score and physical frailty have been compared.

 
The researchers found that different geriatric assessment tools can be used in different circumstances to support physicians during their decision-making process. Some of these tools may also be used to forecast future use of health-care resources, including both hospital-based services and outpatient ones.
Coauthors: Davide L Vetrano, Alessandra Marengoni, Giulia Grande, Amaia Calderón-Larrañagaa, Laura Fratiglioni and Debora Rizzuto.