Abstract:Objective To evaluate the correlation of frailty status with severity and short-term prognosis of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in elderly patients. Methods One hundred and seventeen CAP patients aged ≥80 years admitted to our geriatrics department from September 2017 to December 2018 were enrolled in this study. FRAIL scale was used to assess whether the subjects were frail or not, and all-cause mortality was recorded within 30 days of admission. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the predictive values of indices.Results The body mass index (BMI), short-form mini-nutritional assessment (MNA-SF) score, activities of daily living (ADL) score, instrumental activity of daily living (IADL) score, and albumin and hemoglobin levels were significantly lower (all P<0.001), but the Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), prevalence of malnutrition, the CURB-65 score and incidence of severe pneumonia were obviously higher (all P<0.001) in the frailty group than the non-frailty group. Six patients (5.13%) died within 30 days of admission. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that only severe pneumonia was an independent risk factor for 30-day mortality in the elderly CAP patients (OR=9.76,95%CI 1.03-92.67, P=0.047). The accuracy of FRAIL scale predicted severe pneumonia was 0.868, and 95%CI ranged from 0.787 to 0.948 as measured by the area under the ROC curve.When the cut-off point was 3.5 points, the sensitivity and specificity were 85.7% and 70.9%, respectively. Conclusion Among elderly hospitalized patients with CAP, frailty patients are more likely to develop severe pneumonia and have poor short-term prognosis.