Submitted:
24 December 2025
Posted:
26 December 2025
You are already at the latest version
Abstract
Background: There exists some inconsistent evidence on the relationship between altered cardiac morphology, its function, and frailty. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the associations among frailty, lean body mass, central arterial stiffness, and cardiac structure and geometry in older people with a normal ejection fraction. Methods: A total of 205 patients >65 years were enrolled into this ancillary analysis of FRAPICA study and were assessed for frailty with Fried phenotype scale. Left ventricular dimensions and geometry were assessed with two-dimensional echocardiography. Fat-free mass was measured using three-site skinfold method. Parametric, non-parametric statistics and analysis of covariance were used for statistical calculations. Results: Frail patients were older and women comprised the majority of the frail group. Frail men and women had comparable weight, height, fat-free mass, blood pressure, central blood pressure, and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity to their non-frail counterparts. There was a linear correlation between the sum of frailty criteria and left ventricular end diastolic diameter (negative) and relative wall thickness (positive). In the analysis of covariance, frailty and gender were independently associated with left ventricular mass, left ventricular mass indexed, and relative wall thickness. Frailty shifts heart remodeling toward concentric remodeling/hypertrophy. Conclusions: Frailty is independently associated with thickening of the left ventricular walls and a diminished left ventricular end-diastolic diameter, leading to concentric remodeling or hypertrophy. This phenomenon is more pronounced in women. This adverse cardiac remodeling may serve as another phenotype feature of frailty according to the phenotype frailty criteria.
