ReviewThe American journal of bioethics : AJOB2021
Frailty Triage: Is Rationing Intensive Medical Treatment on the Grounds of Frailty Ethical?
Review in The American journal of bioethics : AJOB, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Parfitian Priority, Gene Therapy, and Disability.The Journal of medicine and philosophy · 2026Article
- The ICUPASS Study: Variability, Influencing Factors, and Clinician Stress in ICU Admission Decisions.Cureus · 2026Article
- Systemic Strategies to Prevent Nonbeneficial Treatments Near the End of Life.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- Collective Reflective Equilibrium, Algorithmic Bioethics and Complex Ethics.Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees · 2025Article
- The ethics of frailty: a need for consensus guidelines.The journal of nutrition, health & aging · 2024Article
- What Do 'Humans' Need? Sufficiency and Pluralism.Ethics, policy & environment · 2023Article
- The need for a multi-disciplinary reflection about frailty and cognitive impairment in chronic kidney disease.Nephrology, dialysis, transplantation : official publication of the European Dialysis and Transplant Association - European Renal Association · 2023Article
- Associated Factors of In-hospital Mortality among Intubated Older Adults in Emergency Department; a Cross-sectional Study.Archives of academic emergency medicine · 2023Article
- Intersections of ageism toward older adults and other isms during the COVID-19 pandemic.The Journal of social issues · 2022Article
- Preparing for the Worst-Case Scenario in a Pandemic: Intensivists Simulate Prioritization and Triage of Scarce ICU Resources.Critical care medicine · 2022Article
- Who gets the ventilator? A multicentre survey of intensivists' opinions of triage during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.Acta anaesthesiologica Scandinavica · 2022Article
- Ethical Guidance for Hard Decisions: A Critical Review of Early International COVID-19 ICU Triage Guidelines.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2022Review
- Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) indicated frailty is associated with increased in-hospital and 30-day mortality in COVID-19 patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Annals of intensive care · 2022Article
- Which factors should be included in triage? An online survey of the attitudes of the UK general public to pandemic triage dilemmas.BMJ open · 2020Article
- Patient Perspectives on the Use of Frailty, Cognitive Function, and Age in Kidney Transplant Evaluation.AJOB empirical bioethicsArticle
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
In early 2020, a number of countries developed and published intensive care triage guidelines for the pandemic. Several of those guidelines, especially in the UK, encouraged the explicit assessment of clinical frailty as part of triage. Frailty is relevant to resource allocation in at least three separate ways, through its impact on probability of survival, longevity and quality of life (though not a fourth-length of intensive care stay). I review and reject claims that frailty-based triage would represent unjust discrimination on the grounds of age or disability. I outline three important steps to improve the ethical incorporation of frailty into triage. Triage criteria (ie frailty) should be assessed consistently in all patients referred to the intensive care unit. Guidelines must make explicit the ethical basis for the triage decision. This can then be applied, using the concept of triage equivalence, to other (non-frail) patients referred to intensive care.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.