What do we know about frailty in the adult population in England?

Abstract

Frailty is an aging-related syndrome of physiological decline, which results in reduced ability of a person to recover from minor health problems. It is common in older adults and increases the likelihood of hospital admissions and a move to residential care. Services supporting older patients with moderate or severe frailty have been developed across the healthcare sector. However, there is a lack of research describing how frailty evolves within the whole adult population and its impact on health services.

In 2017, NHS England introduced routine frailty identification for patients aged 65 and over in General Practice, using tools such as electronic Frailty Index (eFI). As well as improving patient care, use of the eFI enables large-scale population studies to explore the epidemiology of frailty and inform future health service provision. This Evidence Brief describes the results of research that analysed a large primary care dataset of adults in England to understand how common frailty is in adults aged 50 and older, how quickly it progresses and the consequent impact on the use of health services.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Carole Fogg: orcid.org/0000-0002-3000-6185

ORCID for Bronagh Walsh: orcid.org/0000-0003-1008-0545

ORCID for Tracey England: orcid.org/0000-0001-7565-4189

ORCID for Christina Saville: orcid.org/0000-0001-7718-5689

ORCID for Ourega-Zoé Ejebu: orcid.org/0000-0003-0608-5124

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