Does Frailty Increase PCI Risk?

While age is helpful in estimating individual patient risk for undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), the addition of frailty level may help clinicians more accurately appraise risk. To study this possibility, researchers examined the association between frailty level and in-hospital mortality among some 1.3 million patients aged ≥65 years who underwent PCI from 2018 to 2021 in the U.S. Using a validated clinical frailty scale, they categorized patients as nonfrail, prefrail, frail, or severely frail.

Here's what they found:

• Approximately 22% of the cohort were frail and 2% severely frail.

• The in-hospital all-cause mortality rate was 2.4% among all patients, 0.5% in the nonfrail, 1.1% among the prefrail, 3.3% in the frail, and 20…