Validity and reliability of the Edmonton Frail Scale

Abstract

SIR—Age is broadly recognised to confer a risk for adverse health outcomes, but it is an insensitive and non-specific measure for use in individual decision-making. Frailty has been emerging to take its rightful place as a better measure for over a decade [1]. Despite general consensus that the concept of frailty is clinically useful, the lack of agreement on its definition and the challenge of its measurement by front-line health providers mean that frailty remains only ‘heir apparent’ to chronological age as a criterion to select older persons at risk [2].