Frailty affected 36.5% of maintenance hemodialysis participants in a review
The pooled estimate describes existing frailty among people receiving ongoing hemodialysis. Reported associations with health and social factors do not establish causes.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
Frailty was common among the maintenance hemodialysis patients represented in this review. Older age, living alone, other illnesses and several physical or psychological measures were associated with frailty. These findings describe prevalence and related factors; they do not establish that changing any particular factor will prevent frailty or reduce adverse events.
This abstract-based account lacks a confidence interval for prevalence and estimates of association size. The abstract also does not explain frailty definitions or clearly specify the direction of every reported nutritional and inflammatory association.
What researchers found
Pooled frailty prevalence
Among maintenance hemodialysis patients; descriptive estimate with no comparator. Assessment timeframes and a confidence interval are not reported.
Prevalence describes existing frailty
The pooled percentage summarizes how common frailty was among participants in the included studies. It is not a measure of new cases over time, nor an estimate of how likely a particular patient is to become frail.
Associations leave practical questions
The review reports links with depression, weaker grip and sleep disorders, alongside social and medical factors. Without association sizes or clear information about how other factors were accounted for, the abstract cannot establish their relative importance.
The original publication
Frailty in maintenance hemodialysis: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prevalence and risk factors.
Xu Q, Tang M, Wang Y et al.
Int Urol Nephrol · 2026
- PubMed ID
- 41145904
- Record checked
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