Development and Validation of a Risk-Prediction Nomogram for Oral Frailty among Older People Living in Nursing Homes: A Cross-Sectional Study

Objectives This study aimed to determine the prevalence and develop a nomogram for predicting the individual risk of oral frailty among older people living in nursing homes. Methods This was a multicenter cross-sectional study. A total of 324 older people living in nursing homes were included, 224 as the training set and 100 as the external validation set. Univariate and logistic regression analyses were used to identify predictive factors and develop the nomogram. The model’s performance was evaluated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC), the Hosmer-Lemeshow test, and calibration curves. Results The prevalence of oral frailty was found to be 76.2%. The predictive nomogram encompassed five pivotal variables: age, number of teeth, polypharmacy, sarcopenia, and physical frailty. The model showed good discrimination, with the AUC of 0.939 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.860–1.000) for the training group and 0.889 (95% CI: 0.795–0.983) for the validation group. The Hosmer–Lemeshow test results were χ2 = 4.7 (P = 0.628) for the training group and χ2 = 3.6 (P = 0.796) for the validation group. Both the training and validation models demonstrated good calibration. Conclusion This study reveals a high prevalence of oral frailty among older people living in nursing homes. The developed nomogram may serve as a potentially valid tool for quantifying individual risk of oral frailty. It may assist healthcare professionals in the early identification of high-risk individuals, thereby enabling them to provide targeted preventive interventions and improve the management of oral frailty for this vulnerable population.