Frailty is increasingly recognised as a critical predictor of surgical outcomes in cancer patients. This narrative review synthesises current evidence on frailty assessment and its impact on postoperative outcomes in abdominal cancer surgery. Data search bases such as PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar were searched from 2010 to 2024, with a primary focus on frailty assessment tools and outcomes in colorectal, gynaecological, hepatobiliary and urological cancer surgeries. Frailty prevalence ranges from 20% to 60% in abdominal cancer surgery patients. The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) and modified Frailty Index (mFI) are the most validated tools. Frail patients experience 2–3 fold increased mortality (30-day mortality: 8%–15% vs. 2%–5%), prolonged hospital stays (median 12–18 vs. 5–7 days) and higher complication rates (40%–60% vs. 15%–25%). Prehabilitation programs show promise in reducing frailty-related complications by 20%–30%. The integration of validated tools, such as the CFS or mFI, for systematic frailty assessment into the pre-operative evaluation is the need of the hour.
Sharma et al. (Thu,) studied this question.