A comparison of two pre-operative frailty measures in older surgical cancer patients

Frailty syndrome and pre-operative risk evaluation: A systematic review

“…Several studies showed that increasing age was neither a predictor of postoperative morbidity nor of overall survival, suggesting that older individuals can well tolerate surgical procedures (Kristjansson et al, 2012).…”

“…In colorectal cancer patients who were frail preoperatively (as assessed by the comprehensive geriatric assessment [CGA] scale) the most common postoperative complications were related to pulmonary (24% cases), cardiac (23%) system, and in 13% of individuals, delirium (Kristjansson et al, 2012). Moreover, frail individuals were more likely to suffer a severe postoperative complication or die (62%) in comparison to robust (33%) or intermediate/prefrail (36%) individuals (Kristjansson et al, 2012). A growing body of literature supports the concept that accumulated frailty deficits are related to adverse postoperative outcomes in older adults (Table 3).…”

“…Only two studies have compared the ability of different frailty scales to predict postoperative complications and mortality (Afilalo et al, 2012;Kristjansson et al, 2012). Kristjansson et al (2012) compared the CGA scale to a modified version of the physical phenotype of frailty (PF; slightly modified from the original Fried criteria) in a cohort of older adults with colorectal cancer.…”

“…Kristjansson et al (2012) compared the CGA scale to a modified version of the physical phenotype of frailty (PF; slightly modified from the original Fried criteria) in a cohort of older adults with colorectal cancer. They found that a multi-domain frailty measurement based on the CGA was more useful than frailty identified by the modified PF criteria in predicting postoperative complications, although both frailty scales were predictive of mortality rate.…”

Integration of Geriatric Assessment in the Care of Patients with Gastrointestinal Malignancies

“…About 25% of the cohort was frail, and this group had a four times higher risk of developing major complications [24]. Conflicting results were found in another study looking at the physical frailty phenotype; here, only a GA-based frailty measure predicted morbidity, but the physical frailty phenotype was associated with poor survival [25]. An Italian study has confirmed that frailty predicts mortality across different measures in older patients with CRC [20].…”