ArticleFrontiers in medicine2026
The mediating pathways of frailty on healthcare costs and length of stay in older patients with colorectal cancer: a multicenter retrospective study.
Article in Frontiers in medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: The relationship between frailty and healthcare resource utilization in older patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) remains insufficiently quantified. We evaluated the associations of frailty with high inpatient costs, length of stay (LOS), and adverse events, and examined the explanatory roles of co-occurring comorbidity burden and postoperative complications. Methods: This multicenter retrospective study analyzed 4,936 patients aged ≥60 years undergoing elective CRC surgery between 2014 and 2024. Hierarchical multivariable regression models evaluated associations between frailty and outcomes. Mediation-style decomposition was used to estimate the extent to which comorbidity burden and postoperative complications explained frailty-associated differences in high inpatient costs and LOS. A simulation-based sensitivity analysis was performed to assess the potential impact of ICD-10-based frailty misclassification. A Bonferroni-corrected threshold of Results: Frailty was significantly associated with high inpatient costs (OR = 1.274, 95% CI: 1.083-1.498, Conclusion: Frailty was associated with increased healthcare resource utilization and adverse outcomes in older CRC patients. Co-occurring comorbidity burden partly explained the frailty-associated difference in high inpatient costs, whereas prolonged LOS was not significantly explained by postoperative complications. These findings support routine frailty screening and dual-track perioperative optimization targeting both comorbidity burden and frailty-related physiological vulnerability.
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.