Instruments
Demographic and sociodemographic data (age, sex, years of education, marital status) were obtained from interviews performed by a cardiac nurse and patient records. Clinical data, such as New York Heart Association (NYHA) func-tional class, number of rehospitalizations, and duration of the disease were obtained from records and personal interviews performed by a cardiac nurse with the participants.
Frailty was measured using the Polish version of the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI).12 The TFI consists of two parts. One addresses sociodemographic characteristics of a participant (sex, age, marital status, country of origin, educational level, monthly income) and other potential determinants of frailty (lifestyle, multimorbidity, life events, home living environment). The second part addresses components of frailty. Part two of the TFI comprises 15 self-reported questions divided into three domains. The physical domain (0–8 points) consists of eight questions related to physical health, unexplained weight loss, difficulty