Clinical Application of Frailty in the Evaluation of Solid Organ Transplant Patients

Frailty is increasingly recognized as an important predictor of mortality and morbidity in patients across various medical subspecialties. The purpose of this review is to assess how frailty and markers of functional status are viewed within the field of transplant and incorporated into patient evaluations.

Frailty has been shown to influence patient and graft outcomes and many centers incorporate some form of frailty assessment during transplant candidacy evaluation. However, the optimal methods for assessing frailty have not been defined for solid organ transplant populations, and there is no standard approach among different centers. Subjective measures of functional status are recorded in national registries at the time of waitlisting but are largely not used when determining waitlist priority.

This review focuses on currently used tools for assessing frailty in transplant patients and consensus recommendations for future application of frailty in this population.