The Frail Brain

摘要

Recently in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, an expert panel strongly advocated screening for physical frailty, using a simple screening test, such as the FRAIL.1"5 Physical frailty and comorbidity have been shown to be strongly associated with a variety of poor functional outcomes, hospitalization, and mortality Simple treatment strategies for many of the components of frailty have been identified In this issue of the Journal, Shimada et al19 show that although frailty and cognitive impairment can overlap, in most cases of persons with either frailty or early cognitive impairment, there is no overlap. This raises the question of whether or not brain or psychosocial frailty can equally lead to poor outcomes. A number of studies have suggested that frailty when associated with mild cognitive impairment or dementia has very poor outcomes.