Description

Frailty is a state of high vulnerability for adverse health outcomes, including disability, dependency, falls, need for long-term care, and mortality. Several definitions exist, but all measure one's vulnerabilities, strengths, and indirectly assess the physiological reserve. Frailty is not necessarily age dependent, but some of its domain are affected by age. In recent years, frailty has increasingly been recognized as an important factor in the prognosis assessment of an older critically ill patient, in terms of mortality (both in-hospital and long term), hospital length of stay (LOS) and discharge disposition. A previous study performed in Rabin Medical Center ICU demonstrated a strong association between frailty in 90-d mortality of critically ill patients. Frailty is also associated with a higher risk of persistent clinical illness (critical care dependency for survival).

There are several methods for frailty assessment; the comprehensive geriatric assessment is considered the gold standard. However, this method takes time, and requires full patient cooperation, both are usually not possible at the time of critical illness. Several other valeted methods are commonly used, including the Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS), Frailty Index, Frailty phenotype, simple FRAIL questionnaire modified frailty index, and many more.These tools have been validated in different settings, and were found related to several outcomes. There are several differences between the different tools. Some require clinical assessment (with or without patients cooperation), while others require only a review of the healthcare record (EHR). Nevertheless, there are differences between these tools in sensitivity, and specificity in terms of screening and diagnosis of frailty and the contributing factors to the state of frailty.

In 2019 the pictorial fit-frail scale (PFFS) has been introduced as a quick and easy-to-use tool for frailty assessment. It takes few minutes to fill by the patient or caregiver, it's not based on language or health literacy, and requires no clinical examination by the medical staff. The PFFS was validated in several clinical settings, including thoracic surgery clinic, geriatric clinic, memory clinic, and primary care clinics.

PFFS has been assessed in the critical care setting in our unit and was found associated with longer term mortality. The PFFS questionnaire has become a standard of care upon admission to our ICU. This study aims to describe the PFFS scores patients over 60 years old, its correlation with other prognostic scores, and its association with patients' outcomes (ICU length of stay, length of ventilation, ICU mortality, 90days mortality).