Objective:

To study the association between gait speed and cognition in elderly patients undergoing geriatric and gerontological outpatient treatment.

Materials and method:

Quantitative and cross-sectional study with 407 elderly patients (a60 years) treated at the Geriatrics and Gerontology Outpatient Clinic in the town of São José dos Pinhais, Paraná (Brazil). Physical frailty condition was assessed using the frailty phenotype and the cognitive assessment by means of the Mini Mental State Examination and the Semantic Verbal Fluency Test. The univariate analysis was performed using a chi-square test with a level of statistical significance of p s 0.05.

Results:

Out of the total participants, we observed that 226 (55.5%) elderly patients were pre-frail, 238 (58.5%) had cognitive impairments, g0 (22%) showed impaired semantic verbal fluency, and 205 (50.4%) decreased gait speed. This last variable showed a significant association with cognitive decline (p = 0.003) and changes in semantic verbal fluency (p < 0.001).

Conclusions:

Our results indicate the need of implementing gait speed assessment in elderly patients in the geriatrics and gerontology clinical practice. This component reveals a possible cognitive deterioration and enables us to develop actions that may improve care management in the face of physical frailty in elderly individuals.

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