Why and how do we measure frailty?

Excerpt

In the present issue of Internal and Emergency Medicine, Gullón et al. [1] report the results of an interesting observational study aimed at evaluating the prescription patterns of anticoagulants in a sample of older persons with non-valvular atrial fibrillation. In particular, the authors are interested in exploring the influence that the frailty condition (defined using the FRAIL scale [2]) may have on the therapeutic choices. The study confirms that frailty is highly prevalent in the hospital setting, and clearly represents a risk condition for negative health-related outcomes (in particular, in-hospital and 1-year mortality). Nevertheless, it seems that frailty does not represent a predictor of anticoagulant prescription, whereas functional impairment (captured by the Barthel Index) does. …