A Quantitative Frailty Assessment – – Frailty Index
Authors:
Vojtěch Mezera 1,2; Ondřej Sobotka 2
Authors‘ workplace:
Geriatrické centrum, Pardubická nemocnice
1; III. interní gerontometabolická klinika, Fakultní nemocnice, Hradec Králové
2
Published in:
Geriatrie a Gerontologie 2025, 14, č. 1: 22-27
Category:
Review Article
doi:
https://doi.org/10.61568/geri/50-6457/20250217/139906
Overview
The geriatric frailty syndrome refers to the physical vulnerability of the patient, susceptibility to a wide range of diseases and complications. It is one of the key geriatric syndromes, which have a low incidence in middle-aged people and increases with aging. In the Czech Republic, the Fried Frailty Phenotype criteria have been established. However, its semi-quantitative nature of the resulting value can be a disadvantage. In this communication, we present a translation of the Frailty Index questionnaire according to Rockwood along with hyperlinks to automatic evaluation. The result is a quantitative scale from 0 to 1, expressing the severity of geriatric frailty. This approach may be advantageous for research purposes, as the quantitative nature of the determined value provides better statistical evaluation of the results than semi-quantitative scores.
Keywords:
geriatric frailty – Frailty Index – quantitative assessment – Rockwood index
Sources
1. Fried LP, Tangen CM, Walston J, et al. Frailty in older adults: evidence for a phenotype. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2001; 56: M146–156.
2. Pérez-Zepeda MU, Godin J, Armstrong JJ, et al. Frailty among middle-aged and older Canadians: population norms for the frailty index using the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. Age Ageing 2021; 50: 4474–4456.
3. Gale CR, Cooper C, Sayer AA. Prevalence of frailty and disability: findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Age Ageing 2015; 44: 162–165.
4. Vaňková H, Topinková E, Hrnčiariková D, et al. Vyhodnocení syndromu křehkosti (frailty) u geriatrického pacienta. Geriatr Gerontol 2023; 12: 5–8.
5. Rockwood K, Song X, MacKnight C, et al. A global clinical measure of fitness and frailty in elderly
people. Can Med Assoc J 2005; 173: 489–495.
6. Doležalová J, Tóthová V. Vybrané nástroje pro hodnocení geriatrické křehkosti. Geriatr Gerontol 2019; 8: 125–129.
7. Geriatric Medicine Research. Clinical Frailty Scale. Dostupné z: https://www.dal.ca/sites/gmr/our-tools/clinical-frailty-scale.html.
8. Pranata R, Henrina J, Lim MA, et al. Clinical frailty scale and mortality in COVID-19: a systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis. Arch Gerontol Geriatr 2021; 93: 104324.
9. Wernly B, Flaatten H, Leaver S, et al. The clinical frailty scale, but not the FRAIL checklist, is associated with mortality in old critically ill patients with COVID-19. Crit Care 2023; 27: 101.
10. Minnema J, Lafeber M, Sablerolles RSG, et al. Association between Clinical Frailty Scale and mortality 24 months after hospitalisation in adult patients with COVID-19. Heliyon 2024; 10: e40456.
11. Bhattacharjee R, Gupta RK, Patir R. Quantitative vs. semiquantitative assessment of intratumoral susceptibility signals in patients with different grades of glioma. J Magn Reson Imaging 2020; 51: 225–233.
12. Kallner A. Semi-quantitative procedures; half professional or half amateur? What is the other half? Acad Diagn Lab Med Sci Short 2023. Dostupné z: https://myadlm.org/science-and-research/scientific-shorts/2023/semi-quantitative-procedures-half-professional-or-half-amateur-what-is-the-other-half.
13. Blodgett JM, Pérez-Zepeda MU, Godin J, et al. Prognostic accuracy of 70 individual frailty biomarkers in predicting mortality in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. GeroScience 2024; 46: 3061–3069.
14. Rockwood K, Andrew M, Theou O, Mitnitski A. Fit-To-Frail Index Calculator. Can Longitud Study Aging 2021. Dostupné z: https://gmrtoolkit.ca/app3/ (přístup 5. prosince 2023).
15. Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. CLSA-Frailty Index Questionnaire 2020: 1-4. Dostupné z: https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/sites/gmr/CLSA-FI-Questionnaire-2020-09-25.pdf.
16. Dehghan Rouzi M, Lee M, Beom J, et al. Quantitative biomechanical analysis in validating a video-based model to remotely assess physical frailty: a potential solution to telehealth and globalized remote-patient monitoring. Biomed Eng Lett 2024; 14: 1365–
1375.
Labels
Geriatrics General practitioner for adults Orthopaedic prostheticsArticle was published in
Geriatrics and Gerontology
2025 Issue 1
Most read in this issue
- Collaboration between physician and clinical pharmacist in a geriatric patient with oral medication use disorder
- QT interval and sudden death in the elderly during hospitalization
- Long-term caring for senior family members has negative consequences for informal caregivers
- Editorial