11 The challenge in cancer treatment that comorbidity, physiologic, and functional frailty in these aging patients may pose will thus increase in the future.
Measurement of predisposing factors (e.g., age, gender, education, functional frailty) must be embedded in the assessment schedule and standardized with the same degree of precision as the delirium and cognitive variables.
Elders residing in long-term care facilities are at significant risk of poor functional status, frailty, and malnutrition.
The LUCAS Consortium has a special interest in early signs of functional deterioration (frailty) [ 15], with the aim of reversing the process of deterioration.
Micronutrient deficiencies and low dietary intakes among community-dwelling older adults are associated with functional decline, frailty and difficulties with independent living.
The questionnaires covered 18 health related domains, and included pre-clinical markers for functional decline, frailty and disability (Additional File 1: Table S1).
Furthermore, the index provides a tool to address the urgent question whether incipient functional decline/incipient frailty can be recognized early to be influenced positively.
Elevated plasma concentrations of IL-6, IL-1 β, and TNF have been described in elderly populations and are postulated as predictive markers of functional disability, frailty, and mortality.
The LUCAS cohort focuses on the transition of self-supporting community dwelling elderly persons from a healthy, self-reliant initial state, through functional decline, frailty, disability, dependence and ultimately to death in a highly developed industrial country.
Thus, prospective studies are needed to investigate the causes and pathogenetic mechanisms of anemia, as are prospective studies regarding its impact on functional capacity, frailty, and mortality in the elderly.
Obese, or overweight, older subjects with such presumed unimpaired longevity are nevertheless more likely to have hypertension and diabetes; develop coronary artery disease and possibly stroke; experience erectile dysfunction; suffer from accelerated loss of cognitive function, incontinence, frailty, osteoarthritis, and functional disability; and are dependent on others.
