Making the Most of the Right Metrics – An Action Plan

Abstract

Over the last two decades the literature has repeatedly shown that frailty is a strong independent predictor of increased postoperative morbidity and mortality. Multiple studies have put forth various types of assessment tools to measure different aspects of frailty, each providing sound, statistically significant evidence to argue their metric is superior to others. Despite this, even if we are successful in assessing a frail patient’s risk for surgery, we do not have a system in place that can translate data gathered from risk-assessment metrics into effective interventions that will improve outcomes. We must put what we know into practice and implement a plan that informs the preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative processes. In this article, we present an action plan that seeks to do just that to implement a Frailty Clinical Surgical Pathway to be offered to frailty patients as a comprehensive approach to surgery.