Frailty: risk stratification, measurement and outcomes in surgical and critically ill patients

Abstract

Surgical and intensive care populations are ageing worldwide. Frailty, a state of increased vulnerability to stress, is increasingly common in older surgical and critically ill patients. In these cohorts, frailty predisposes to increased complications, mortality, and longer lengths of stay. Implementation of frailty screening can aid case finding, to select patients for more in-depth frailty measurement. This can assist identification of at-risk surgical and critically ill patients, and help identify which areas of health are more affected by frailty in these populations. Using routinely collected hospital data may allow construction of frailty indices, which can accurately and reproducibly ..