Several years ago, Paula Span, a writer for the New York Times, published an article titled “One Last Question Before the Operation: Just How Frail Are You?” aimed at creating public awareness of the importance of frailty assessment in the older patient who is going to have a surgical procedure.
1 The same author, a couple of years later, once again wrote about the crucial need to assess older adults for frailty even if they were going for minor operations, and become cognizant of the potential struggles that an older adult could face.
2 Ms. Span touched on a very significant subject: the patient-centered care of the surgical frail older adult. A landmark publication in JAMA Surgery looking at 30- and 90-day mortality of 2.7 million surgical patients concluded that frailty was “associated with postoperative mortality across all non-cardiac surgical specialties regardless of case mix.”
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