RESULTS Severity of frailty syndrome significantly correlated with post-surgical mortality rates and with many although not all post-surgical complications .
These relationships emerge in different type of surgical procedures and patients ' features .
BACKGROUND Frailty is a geriatric syndrome characterized by the clinical presentation of identifiable physical alterations and decreased physiological reserve .
The assessment of frailty syndrome has been recently related with post-surgical outcomes and overall mortality in older individuals .
Old or frail: what tells us more?
BACKGROUND Selecting elderly persons who need geriatric interventions  and making accurate treatment decisions are recurring challenges in geriatrics . Chronological age , although often used , does not seem to be the best selection criterion . Instead , the concept of frailty , which indicates several concurrent losses in re sources , can be used . METHODS The predictive values of chronological age and frailty were investigated in a large community sample of persons aged 65 years and older , r and omly drawn from the register of six municipalities in the northern regions of the Netherl and s ( 45 % of the original addressees ) . The participants ' generative capacity to sustain well-being ( i.e. , self-management abilities ) was used as the main outcome measure . RESULTS When using chronological age instead of frailty , both too many and too few persons were selected . Furthermore , frailty related more strongly ( with beta values ranging from -.25 to -.39 ) to a decline in the participants ' self-management abilities than did chronological age ( with beta values ranging from -.06 to -.14 ) . Chronological age added very little to the explained variances of all outcomes once frailty was included . CONCLUSIONS Using frailty as the criterion to select older persons at risk for interventions may be better than selecting persons based only on their chronological age
RESULTS Severity of frailty syndrome significantly correlated with post-surgical mortality rates and with many although not all post-surgical complications .
These relationships emerge in different type of surgical procedures and patients ' features .
BACKGROUND Frailty is a geriatric syndrome characterized by the clinical presentation of identifiable physical alterations and decreased physiological reserve .
The assessment of frailty syndrome has been recently related with post-surgical outcomes and overall mortality in older individuals .