Transitions between degrees of multidimensional frailty among older people admitted to intermediate care: a multicentre prospective study.

Background: Frailty is a dynamic condition that is clinically expected to change in older individuals during and around admission to an intermediate care (IC) facility. We aimed to characterize transitions between degrees of frailty before, during, and after admission to IC and assess the impact of these transitions on health outcomes.

Methods: Multicentre observational prospective study in IC facilities in Catalonia (North-east Spain).

Frailty degree and illness trajectories in older people towards the end-of-life: a prospective observational study.

Objectives: To assess the degree of frailty in older people with different advanced diseases and its relationship with end-of-life illness trajectories and survival.

Methods: Prospective, observational study, including all patients admitted to the Acute Geriatric Unit of the University Hospital of Vic (Spain) during 12 consecutive months (2014-2015), followed for up to 2 years. Participants were identified as end-of-life people (EOLp) using the NECPAL (, palliative care needs) tool and were classified according to their dominant illness trajectory.

Chair ICO/UVIC-UCC of palliative care at the University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia: an innovative multidisciplinary model of education, research and knowledge transfer.

Objectives: Generation and dissemination of knowledge is a relevant challenge of palliative care (PC). The Chair Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO)/University of Vic (UVIC) of Palliative Care (CPC) was founded in 2012, as a joint project of the ICO and the University of Vic/Central of Catalonia to promote the development of PC with public health and community-oriented vision and academic perspectives. The initiative brought together professionals from a wide range of disciplines (PC, geriatrics, oncology, primary care and policy) and became the first chair of PC in Spain.

Ethical Challenges of Early Identification of Advanced Chronic Patients in Need of Palliative Care: The Catalan Experience.

Palliative care must be early applied to all types of advanced chronic and life limited prognosis patients, present in all health and social services. Patients' early identification and registry allows introducing palliative care gradually concomitant with other measures. Patients undergo a systematic and integrated care process, meant to improve their life quality, which includes multidimensional assessment of their needs, recognition of their values and preferences for advance care planning purposes, treatments review, family care, and case management.

Frail-VIG index: a concise frailty evaluation tool for rapid geriatric assessment.

Background: Demographic changes have led to an increase in the number of elderly frail persons and, consequently, systematic geriatric assessment is more important than ever. Frailty Indexes (FI) may be particularly useful to discriminate between various degrees of frailty but are not routinely assessed due, at least in part, to the large number of deficits assessed (from 30 to 70). Therefore, we have developed a new, more concise FI for rapid geriatric assessment (RGA)-the Frail-VIG index ("VIG" is the Spanish/Catalan abbreviation for Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment), which contains 22 simple questions that assess 25 different deficits.