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Frail older patients are at excess risk for postoperative mortality after elective surgery, but population-based studies are lacking. In a Canadian study, researchers identified all elective major noncardiac surgeries performed in older patients (age, ≥65) between 2002 and 2012 in Ontario. Frailty status was assigned according to Johns Hopkins Adjusted Clinical Groups (ACG), which extracts 12 frailty-defining clusters (e.g., malnutrition, weight loss, dementia, gait disturbances, falling, incontinence) from administrative data.
Among 203,000 study patients, 3% were considered to be frail. One-year mortality was substantially higher in frail than in nonfrail patients (13.6% vs. 4.8%). Relative risk for death in frail (vs. nonfrail) patients w…