ReviewJournal of clinical medicine2025
Frailty in Geriatrics: A Critical Review with Content Analysis of Instruments, Overlapping Constructs, and Challenges in Diagnosis and Prognostic Precision.
Review in Journal of clinical medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
26 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Multi-cohort evidence linking edentulism to frailty among older adults.Scientific reports · 2025Pooled it
- Frailty and survival of patients with renal cell carcinoma: A meta-analysis.Biomolecules & biomedicine · 2025Pooled it
- Minimally Invasive Implant Rehabilitation in Geriatric Patients: A Comprehensive Narrative Review of Contemporary Strategies to Avoid Extensive Bone Augmentation Procedures.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Endoscopic Papillectomy for Ampullary Tumors in Older Patients: Balancing Oncologic Benefit and Geriatric Risk.Digestive endoscopy : official journal of the Japan Gastroenterological Endoscopy Society · 2026Review
- Frailty as an Emerging Concern in Post-Extubated Patients: Are We Missing a Critical Window for Recovery?Nursing in critical care · 2026Article
- Unsupervised Clinical Phenotyping Identifies Distinct Risk Profiles in Incisional Hernia Repair.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- Surgical Resection of a Giant Hepatocellular Carcinoma in an 89-Year-Old Patient with Multiple Comorbidities: The Role of Frailty Assessment and Preoperative Optimisation-A Case Report and Literature Review.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Frailty and Echocardiographic Indices of Diastolic Function in Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Analysis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- The association between frailty and quality of life in elderly population in Southern Iran: Findings from the Bushehr Elderly Health Program.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- A three-biomarker panel for frailty prediction and risk stratification in institutionalized older adults: a multicenter validation study.European geriatric medicine · 2026Article
- Defining Frailty in Chinese-Language Biomedical Literature (2014-2024): A Decade of Conceptual Evolution.Aging medicine (Milton (N.S.W)) · 2026Review
- Exploring educational needs on frailty outside geriatrics: a survey of European Union of Medical Specialists' bodies.European geriatric medicine · 2026Article
- Does Chronological Age Adequately Stratify Perioperative Risk? A Prospective Multicenter Cohort Study Using Frailty and Handgrip Strength.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Doctors' and Pharmacists' knowledge, skills, and perception of mental frailty in older adults: a scoping review.BMC primary care · 2026Article
- Acceptability and feasibility of the Zulfiqar Frailty Scale (ZFS) in primary care: a cross-sectional survey.Journal of medicine and life · 2026Article
- Care and Health Needs of Older Patients with Frailty in General Practice.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Heterogeneity Within Frailty: Physiological Reserve Phenotypes and Postoperative Recovery After Abdominal Surgery.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Social frailty, functional ability and social capital: a study among urban slum older adults in Tamil Nadu, India-convergent parallel mixed method study.BMC geriatrics · 2026Article
- Interaction Between Frailty and Renal Function in Patients with Heart Failure.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Frailty is a key concept in geriatric care; yet its definition and assessment remain debated. Since the early 2000s, two main models have emerged: the Fried frailty phenotype, focusing on physical deficits, and the Mitnitski frailty index, which incorporates broader health factors. These divergent approaches have led to over 50 frailty instruments, reflecting the absence of a unified framework. This review explores the content, weighting, and scoring methods of frailty instruments, identifying potential concerns derived from this. This review exposes the overlap of frailty with other constructs including function, disability, morbidity, and sarcopenia. Many instruments lack content validity, and detect highly heterogeneous samples within and between scales, all labeled under the "frail" tag. This poses challenges to interpreting instrument responsiveness. In addition, frailty should not be considered a clinical entity with a unique etiology. This review discusses how the broad nature of frailty conflicts with modern paradigms of individualization and precision. They may be useful in primary care, but lack the specificity for secondary care evaluations. This article also discusses how the predictive validity of frailty should be interpreted with caution. Finally, we summarize our findings and propose a new definition of frailty, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the construct. The identified inconsistencies should serve as a guide for refining the concept of frailty, both in research and in its application to geriatric care.
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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.