EVALUATION OF RISK FACTORS FOR SARCOPENIA IN INSTITUTIONALIZED ELDERLY: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

Population aging has increased and brought changes in the conformity of families and in the current demography, which is reflected in changes in the health and disease status, with sarcopenia as a highlight, a condition characterized by a decrease in muscle mass. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the main risk factors associated with sarcopenia in institutionalized elderly. To this end, a systematic review was carried out based on PRISMA, using the databases: PubMed, Lilacs, Scopus, Embase and SciELO, along with the descriptors: “sarcopenia”, “elderly” and “long-term care facility”. Studies from the last 10 years were included, in versions in English, Spanish and Portuguese; as exclusion criteria: reviews, unavailable articles that did not address the topic. The prevalence of sarcopenia was 43.2%, 73.9% had probable sarcopenia, 50.7% had mild sarcopenia and 38.3% had moderate/severe sarcopenia. The EWGSOP protocol (13 studies, 59%) was the most used to classify sarcopenia, males had a higher prevalence (51.9%) than females (49.2%). As for risk factors, it was divided into groups: sociodemographic variables (thirteen studies, 59.1%), anthropometric data, nutritional status and physical-functional/cognitive functioning (nine studies each, 41%), presence of comorbidities (five studies, 22.7%), lifestyle (four studies, 18.2%) and clinical conditions (three studies, 13.6%). This review showed that the great variability of criteria that can be used to define sarcopenia can influence the results found in the literature, which suggests a standardization of criteria and cutoff points, in order to minimize such variation.