RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS OF THE 28th ECVIM-CA CONGRESS

In humans, and in dogs alike, the risk of mortality increases with age. Such an increase is not uniform and not all the individuals of the same age have the same risk of mortality. In humans, the risk of mortality and other adverse outcomes in elderly people is increasingly being assessed by means of the so‐called frailty index (FI). This index is calculated by considering a checklist of multidimensional health deficits (e.g. symptoms, signs, laboratory abnormalities) potentially accumulated by the aging individual. To calculate the FI, the actual number of deficits in an individual is counted and divided by the total number of deficits included in the checklist. In humans, the FI shows a moderate accuracy in the prediction of near term (less than 18 months) mortality. A specific FI has been developed also in mice. We developed a dogs‐specific FI computed by considering 33 deficits, that was divided into two parts: the first 19 questions were focused on the general health status as reported by the owner, whereas the second 14 questions reported the results of the clinical evaluation of the subject along with the findings of the diagnostic and laboratory tests performed during the routine clinical evaluation. Dogs presented to our facility between January 2017 and August 2017 were included. Inclusion criteria included a complete clinical evaluation of the subject and recent (less that 2 months) blood analysis. Fatalities were excluded from the study. Mortality was assessed six months after the FI was administered. 124 dogs belonging to several different breeds matched the inclusion criteria (mean age: 8,26± 4,4 years). The developed FI had a high diagnostic accuracy in the prediction of near term mortality (six months) with an area under the curve of 0,93 (95% confidence interval (CI)= 0.87‐0.97); using a cut‐off value of 0,23 the sensitivity was 78,57% (95% CI= 49.2‐95.3) and the specificity of 90,91% (95% CI= 83.9‐95.6), the positive likelihood ratio was 8.64 (95% CI= 4.5‐16.6), the negative likelihood ratio was 0.24 (95% CI = 0.09‐0.6). There was a moderate (r= 0,454 – 95% CI= 0.301‐0.583) but significant (p= 0.001) correlation between the frailty index and age. A large‐scale use of the FI could provide new interesting information regarding the aging process in the dog.