Frailty Assessment by Edmonton Frail Scale to Predict Outcome in Patients Undergoing Cardiovascular Surgery "Frail Heart" Study.

Frailty is a state of loss of functional reserve resulting in an increased vulnerability to a stressor event. From a pathophysiological point of view, it is an accelerated decrease in physiological reserve related to ageing.

Currently, evaluation of the outcome after cardiac surgery is commonly based on scores not taking into account the concept of frailty (Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) and Eurosore II) Recent studies have shown an independent association between post cardiac surgery mortality and pre-operative frailty. Beyond cardiac surgery, frailty has been shown to be associated with higher mortality and morbidity among intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Frailty is commonly assessed for patients older than 75 years of age but the prevalence in younger patients admitted to the hospital is significant. There is therefore need to evaluate all patients for frailty in the preoperative period.

Since the Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) allows easy screening of all frailty domains, we hypothesized that it could be a reliable and feasible score to assess preoperative frailty and to predict postoperative morbidity and mortality.

Objectives:

The primary objective of this study is to evaluate preoperative frailty in all adult patients undergoing cardiac and vascular surgery.