Identification and Management of Frailty in Older People in Brazil: a scoping review protocol

Objective: to look for evidence on how researchers, health and social care professionals in Brazil currently detect and treat frailty in older adults.

Introduction: rapid population aging and associated increased healthcare usage by older people with frailty are challenging the sustainability of healthcare for older people in Brazil. Understanding how frailty is assessed and treated in Brazil is an important part of building a response to the challenge.

Inclusion criteria: this scoping review will consider studies that included Brazilian older adults (60 years old) recruited from different settings (community, primary care, health care centers, hospital and long-term institutions). The articles will be included if frailty assessment has been conducted using at least transcultural adapted tools. This review will consider systematic reviews, observational and interventional studies. National policies for older people will be also considered for analysis, excluding expert opinion papers and non-peer reviewed articles.

Methods: Indexed and grey literature in English and Portuguese from 2001 to the present will be considered. The searches will be conducted using bibliographic databases, university repositories and grey literature (Brazilian government official database). The studies will be independently selected from the inclusion criteria by two authors based on their title and abstract. In case of disagreement, a third author will be consulted. A customized data extraction form will be used to perform data extraction of the included studies. The results will be presented in tabular form, accompanied by a narrative summary related to the objective of the present scoping review.