The Importance of Frailty in Stroke and How to Measure It

The term ‘frailty’ is used frequently in healthcare and has become topical for both research andclinical care. Although many clinicians report an intuition for identifying frailty, there is oftenuncertainty over what it actually represents, how it can be assessed, and what it may mean for thepatient. This article provides a focused introduction to frailty for the stroke clinician-in-training(and for those more experienced), in particular the different approaches to evaluating frailty inthe stroke setting.