Quantification of frailty is useful both for understanding the nature of the syndrome and for designing an ICU care plan for patients that suffer from it. Knowing the needs and deficits of each patient individually, it is possible to create a care plan suitable to cover all the patients' needs. Tools used to date to quantify frailty syndrome are the Fried phenotype, Frailty index, Edmonton Frailty Scale, and Clinical Frailty Scale. The Clinical Frailty Scale is one of the most user-friendly scales with particular predictive value. By recording and analyzing the information collected and ranking ICU patients at nine points on the scale, it is possible to draw valid predictive conclu-sions about the mortality or institutionalization needs that are present within the next five years.
Keywords: ICU; critically ill patients; frailty syndrome.
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