Vellas B, Balardy L, Gillette-Guyonnet S, et al.
J Nutr Health Aging 2013;17:629-31
Publication date: July 1, 2013
Summary
Identification of frail patients before their vulnerability is made evident by the onset of a major clinical event is one of the major challenges in implementing frailty into clinical practice. General practitioners play a key role in this context. Due to an often busy practice, they need to be supported, for example by the provision of user-friendly and time-efficient screening tools.
Vellas and colleagues present the Gérontopôle Frailty Screening Tool (GFST), an 8-item questionnaire intended to help general practitioners identify frailty in community-dwelling persons 65 years or older without functional disability or current acute disease. The first 6 questions evaluate the patient’s status (living alone, involuntary weight loss, fatigue, mobility difficulties, memory problems and gait speed), whereas the last two assess the general practitioner’s personal view about the frailty status of the individual and the patient’s willingness to be referred to the Frailty Clinical for further evaluation.
Although the GFST remains to be validated, preliminary experience with 442 individuals indicates that over 95% of the patients referred to the Frailty Clinic by general practitioners using this questionnaire were frail or pre-frail according to Fried criteria. In addition, this screening tool was well received by the practitioners.
GFST in PDF format – Catalan version
GFST in PDF format – Dutch version
GFST in PDF format – English version
GFST in PDF format – French version
GFST in PDF format – Greek version
GFST in PDF format – Portuguese version
GFST in PDF format – Spanish version