Editorial: Something About Frailty

RAILTY is a commonly used term indicating older per-sons at increased risk for morbidity and mortality (1). In some ways, it is analogous in older persons with the term “failure to thrive ” in young children. Unfortunately, it has been poorly defined in the medical literature. There is general agreement that frailty is not adequately defined as purely a decline in functional status, although functional status is itself a predictor of poor outcomes (2–5), and Gealey (6) found that persons perceived to be frail also showed functional impairment. Brown and colleagues (7) defined frailty as a state that “occurs when there is dimin-ished ability to carry out the important practical and social activities of daily living. ” Hougaard (8) defined frailty as “a random effects model for time variables, where the random effect (frailty) has a multiplicative effect on harzard. ” Rock-