Retrospective frailty determination in critical illness from a review of the intensive care unit clinical record

Abstract

Frailty is one of the major challenges for intensive care, affecting one-third of intensive care unit patients and being associated with a range of poor health outcomes. Determination of frailty in critical illness using the Clinical Frailty Scale has recently been adopted by the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society, but it is not known whether this is able to be measured from the clinical record without interviewing patients or their relatives. The aims of this retrospective cohort study were to test whether a Clinical Frailty Scale score could be assigned in an intensive care unit population from the clinical record, and to assess the inter-rater reliability of frailty measure..