Published: Nov 27, 2013
By Elbert Chu, Associate Producer, MedPage Today
Individuals who are frail face increased risks of dependency and mortality.
To explore new efforts to screen for frailty, we turned to John Morley, MD, director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. In 2007, Morley published a book calledThe Science of Staying Young. In June, he and his colleagues published a paper in theJournal of the American Medical Directors Association that outlined the need for frailty screening.
In this video, we spoke with Morley about implementation of a new tool that adds to the science of preventive care in gerontology. Here, he discusses a new set of five questions for physicians to ask patients older than 70 for a quick evaluation of how FRAIL a patient is. He says it takes just 15 seconds:
Fatigue: Are you fatigued?
Resistance: Do you have difficulty walking up one flight of steps?
Aerobic: Are you unable to walk at least one block?
Illness: Do you have more than five illnesses?
Loss of weight: Have you lost more than 5% of your weight in the past 6 months?