Frailty Increases Morbidity and Mortality in Patients Undergoing Oncological Liver Resections: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Considered to reflect a patients’ biological age, frailty is a new syndrome shown to predict surgical outcomes in elderly patients. In view of the increasing age at which patients are proposed oncological liver surgery and the morbidity associated with it, we attempted to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare morbidity and mortality between frail and nonfrail patients after liver resections.

The study was registered with PROSPERO. A systematic search of PubMed and EMBASE databases was performed for all comparative studies examining surgical outcomes after liver resections between frail and nonfrail patients.

Ten studies were included based on the selection criteria with a total of 71,102 patients, split into two groups: frail (n = 17,167) and the control group (n = 53,928). There were more elderly patients with a lower preoperative albumin level in the frail group (p = 0.02, p = 0.001). Frail patients showed higher rates of morbidity with more major complications and a higher incidence of postoperative liver failure (p < 0.001). Mortality (p < 0.001) and readmission rate (p = 0.021) also was higher in frail patients.

Frailty seems to be a solid predictive risk factor of morbidity and mortality after liver surgery and should be considered a selection criterion for liver surgery in at-risk patients.