The Impact of Hospitalization After Major Surgery on Elderly Frail Patients: a Prospective Observational Study

Frailty has been recently re-defined as a condition that is evident over time through an excess of vulnerability to stressors, with reduced ability to maintain or regain homeostasis after a destabilizing event, and occurrence of disability. Frailty has been often used to characterize the weakest and most vulnerable subset of older adults, because of age, comorbidities, social and emotional status leading to the lack of functional and psychological reserve and mining the capability to face acute events. Frail patients are becoming ever more present in Anesthesia and Intensive Care. In fact, 30 percent of surgery is conducted on patients ≥ 70 years old nowadays. It has been demonstrated that the impact of surgery and anesthesiologic risk are greater in older frail subjects, and that a low functional status is associated with increased mortality. Also, post-operative delirium and cognitive disfunction are more often seen in older patients. For this reason, the worsening of the global performance status, as functional status, mobility, and cognitive status may have a large impact on patient and caregivers' life. The primary objective is to evaluate the impact at three months after hospitalization following major surgery i.e., urology, general surgery, orthopedics, on the performance status as functional status, mobility, and cognitive status of patients ≥ 70 years old. Secondary objectives are to evaluate the necessity of domiciliary care assistance and re-hospitalization or rehabilitation center admissions in three months following surgery and to evaluate the impact of the type of anesthesia used in major surgery i.e., general vs regional anesthesia, on patient performance status.