Frailty: How to assess, prognostic role

Despite the clear clinical significance of frailty in surgical populations, there is no consensus on how best to define or measure frailty, even within the geriatric literature. A diversity of measures exists to measure some or all these domains, but only research-focused tools have been validated in surgical populations. These tools are too resource-intensive for rapid, cost-effective, preoperative screening of entire populations considering elective surgery. This narrative review deals with the definition of frailty and the different assessment methods of the phenotypic definition and the accumulation of deficits definition. Moreover, as in the area of surgery frailty seems to be an independent risk factor for mortality, morbidity, length of stay, and postoperative complication, different studies reporting the association of preoperative frailty with postoperative outcomes after cancer surgery and the association with postoperative mortality within 30 days are considered. Preoperative care should include a focus on the goals of treatment and care options. Patient-oriented functional and cognitive outcomes as well as the development and implementation of interventions that could potentially improve adverse postoperative effects must be further investigated.