Shakespeare deliberately endowed his Caesar with physical frailties, including deafness in one ear.
As prime minister, he has learned a lot about the best of human nature and also about its frailties, including his own.
"I've been privileged to learn much about the very best in human nature, and a fair amount, too, about its frailties, including my own".
It wasn't just his assertion that he had learned "much about the very best in human nature and a fair amount too about its frailties", including, he was careful to add, his own.
Organizations that have signed on to the new consensus statement on frailty include the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics; the Society on Sarcopenia, Cachexia and Wasting Disorders; the European Union Geriatric Medicine Society; the American Medical Directors Association; the American Federation for Aging Research; and the International Academy on Nutrition and Aging.
The clinical markers of frailty include: nutritional condition, mobility, activity, strength and endurance, cognitive functions, and mood.
Manifestations of frailty include sarcopenia (loss of skeletal muscle mass); cognitive decline; abnormal functioning of immune and neuroendocrine systems; and poor energy regulation (Clegg et al., 2013).
Adverse outcomes independently associated with frailty include, but are not limited to, mortality [ 54, 55], hospitalization [ 19] or falls [ 56, 57].
Main features of frailty include weakness, as well as balance and gait problems, all of which predispose older people to falling [ 1].
While a clear consensus on the operational definition of frailty has yet to be agreed upon [ 2], the most commonly used definitions of frailty include weight loss, exhaustion, low activity level, slow gait speed and sarcopenia [ 3].
