Frailty (a state of increased vulnerability to physiologic stressors) is common in older adults. Frailty can be measured in several ways, including by a simple test such as walking speed or more thorough criteria. The geriatrics community has long recognized that frailty predicts hospitalization, functional decline, and death. Cardiologists are increasingly recognizing the importance of frailty as well: for example, in predicting outcomes after cardiac surgery and myocardial infarction.
Building on this work, we recently published a paper in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions that highlighted the role of frailty in predicting bleeding among cardiac patients with myocardial infarction in the ACTION registry. While the link may not seem intuitive, there are a number of reasons frailty may confer bleeding risk, including poor vascular integrity, altered hemostatic factors, and issues related to treatments (e.g. overdosing of anticoagulants).
There were several key findings from our work: first, frailty increased bleeding risk by 50%; second, this was only seen in patients undergoing cardiac catheterization; third, the use of strategies that may reduce bleeding (radial access, and proper dosing of anticoagulant medications) was relatively low. The findings in this large cohort largely confirmed what had been shown previously in smaller studies.
I think there are several actionable steps from this work. First, frailty matters – and we should start measuring it. Our study used a combination of variables abstracted from the medical record, which may have under-detected the true prevalence of frailty. Walking speed, an alternative measure of frailty, can be easily obtained in the hospital on most patients and is easily reproducible. Second, for frail patients, bleeding avoidance strategies are critical. For example, radial access was only used in only 1 in 4 frail patients in our study. Randomized trials in older adults have used higher rates of radial access and have found less bleeding. So this seems to be one relatively straightforward way to improve outcomes in our frail patients.
By: John Dodson, MD, MPH
For more information on frailty, a frailty infographic is posted on our “Infographics” page.
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