A single-center prospective cohort study assessing preoperative gait speed assessment as a prognostic tool for morbidity and mortality in frail elderly patients undergoing abdominal surgery

Abstract

Frailty is a significant risk factor for adverse outcomes in elderly surgical patients. Gait speed assessment is a new tool recently used to stratify risk for these pre-operative adverse outcomes. In this prospective study of 392 frail elderly patients undergoing abdominal surgery, we investigated the predictive value of preoperative gait speed for postoperative outcomes. Patients were divided into two groups based on their 6-meter gait speed: normal (≥0.8 m/s, n=184) and slow (<0.8 m/s, n=208). The slow group was older, had more comorbidities, and higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grades (P<0.05). They also had significantly higher rates of 30-day overall complications (38.9 vs 18.5%, P<0.01), severe complications (12.0 vs 4.3%, P<0.01), and 1-year mortality (15.4 vs 6.5%, P=0.008) compared to the normal group. Pulmonary infection, wound infection, and delirium were the most common complications. Multivariate logistic regression confirmed slow gait speed as an independent risk factor for 30-day complications (OR=2.38, 95%CI: 1.41-4.01) and 1-year mortality (OR=2.19, 95%CI: 1.07-4.48). Our findings demonstrated that preoperative 6-meter gait speed effectively predicted short-term complications and mid-term mortality in frail elderly patients undergoing abdominal surgery. This suggests the need for individualized perioperative management strategies for high-risk patients with slow gait speed to potentially improve their prognosis.

Figure 1. Kaplan-Meier survival curve comparing 1-year mortality between normal and slow gait speed groups.