We know it when we see it, but what does it really mean to say someone is "frail?" Can frailty be prevented? Can it be cured?
People who are frail "are thin and weak. They have no energy. They tire easily. Their walking speed is agonizingly slow," says geriatrician, Ava Kaufman, in a 2012 Washington Post article, Frailty is a medical condition, not an inevitable result of aging. "They aren't really ill, at least not with any identifiable diseases. But they aren't well, either." Thirty years ago "we couldn't put our finger on a specific diagnosis or problem,'' says Kaufman. "We didn't have a word for it then."
What is Frailty?
In the past, frailty was considered a diagnosis but now is understood to be a result of a number of conditions that, when combined together, can cause an individual to become increasingly weak. Because it typically gets worse over time, frailty has serious consequences for the individual including the likelihood of suffering a disabling fall, having reduced immunity to illnesses and ability to recover, hospitalizations, and death. "Putting a frail person in the hospital often is the beginning of the end,'' Kaufman says.
"The symptoms [of frailty] are linked together in a vicious cycle,'' says Linda P. Fried, dean of the Columbia University School of Public Health. In 2001, Fried and research colleagues were the first to define the physical characteristics of frailty in a paper...
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