Onkológia 6/2014

The frailty: common point for geriatrician and palliative-carephysician

The frailty syndrome is a specific geriatric topic, one of the geriatric syndromes. Because of the geriatrization of the society this topic is becoming more and more pressing. The prevalence of frailty increases after 80 years of age and typical for the developed stage of frailty is the inability to do well with such consequences as disability, complications in the diagnostic and treatment process of other diseases, institutionalization, long-term care and death. And thus this problem exceeds beyond geriatrics to paliative medicine. In December 2012 workgroups met in Orlando in an effort to reach a consensus in the area of definition, diagnostics and prevention of elderly person´s frailty. The frailty itself can be an indication for palliative treatment and significantly influences diagnostics and (curative and palliative) treatment of other oncological or non-oncological terminal diseases.

Keywords: geriatric frailty, comprehensive geriatric assessment, phenotype and index of frailty, prevention, palliative care.