Effects of exercise interventions on physical, psychological and social outcomes in frail older adults: An overview of systematic reviews.

AIMS: To comprehensively synthesise existing evidence from systematic reviews regarding the effects of exercise interventions on physical, psychological and social outcomes in frail older adults to provide reference for clinical practice.

BACKGROUND: Frailty is highly prevalent in older adults and associated with increased adverse health outcomes. Some systematic reviews have assessed the effectiveness of exercise interventions in frail older adults with varied inclusion criteria, methodology quality, types of exercise and outcome measures.

DESIGN: An overview of systematic reviews reported following the PRISMA checklist.

METHODS: PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, Web of Science and Cochrane database were searched from inception until June 2023 to identify relevant systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis of randomised controlled trails. Two reviewers independently selected articles, extracted data, assessed quality and summarised findings.

RESULTS: A total of 17 systematic reviews were included, with methodology quality varying from moderate to critically low. The most frequent types of exercise were multicomponent exercise and resistance-based exercise in community and long-term care facilities, respectively. Exercise interventions had positive effects on most physical outcomes and depression, but inconsistent effects on cognitive function and quality of life. The quality of the evidence for most outcomes was low and very low.

CONCLUSIONS: This overview highlights the importance of exercise interventions to improve physical, psychological and social aspects in frail older adults and provides evidence on characteristics of exercise interventions for frailty in various settings.

RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Multicomponent exercise and resistance-based exercise should be recommended for frail older adults. There is a need of more well-designed research with large sample size and validated definition of frailty. Long-term effects, adherence during and after exercise interventions, adverse events and cost-effectiveness should be emphasised in future studies.

TRIAL AND PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The overview protocol was registered on the International Prospective Register of Systematic reviews (CRD 42021281327).

PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: No patient or public contribution.

REPORTING METHOD: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines were applied to report the results.