The frailty syndrome: definition and natural history

Abstract

This article reviews the current state of knowledge regarding the epidemiology of frailty by focusing on 6 specific areas: (1) clinical definitions of frailty, (2) evidence of frailty as a medical syndrome, (3) prevalence and incidence of frailty by age, gender, race, and ethnicity, (4) transitions between discrete frailty states, (5) natural history of manifestations of frailty criteria, and (6) behavior modifications as precursors to the development of clinical frailty.

Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Figures

Fig. 1

Cycle of frailty. (Xue QL, Bandeen-Roche K, Varadhan R, et al. Initial manifestations of frailty criteria and the development of frailty phenotype in the Women’s Health and Aging Study II. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2008;63(9):984–90, by permission of the Gerontological Society of America.)

Fig. 2

Theoretical model of the association of life space with the clinical syndrome of frailty. Solid and dashed lines represent direct and indirect effects, respectively; arrows represent causal direction. (Xue QL, Fried LP, Glass TA, et al. Life-space constriction, development of frailty, and the competing risk of mortality: the Women’s Health And Aging Study I. Am J Epidemiol 2008;167(2):240–8, by permission of Oxford University Press.)