Frailty detection by healthcare professionals: a systematic review of the available English and French tools and their validation.

Background: There is a wide variety of frailty detection tools, but no gold standard. Choosing the most appropriate tool can therefore be complicated. Our systematic review seeks to provide useful data on the frailty detection tools available to help healthcare professionals in choosing a tool.

Method: We systematically searched for articles published between January 2001 and December 2022 in three electronic databases. Articles were to be written in English or French and were to discuss a frailty detection tool used by healthcare professionals in a population without specific health conditions. Any self-testing, physical testing or biomarkers were excluded. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were also excluded. Data were extracted from two coding grids; one for the criteria used by the tools to detect frailty and the other for the evaluation of clinimetric parameters. The quality of the articles was assessed using QUADAS-2.

Results: A total of 52 articles, covering 36 frailty detection tools, were included and analysed in the systematic review. Forty-nine different criteria were identified, with a median of 9 (IQR 6-15) criteria per tool. Regarding the evaluation of tool performances, 13 different clinimetric properties were identified, with a mean of 3.6 (± 2.2) properties assessed per tool.

Conclusion: There is considerable heterogeneity in the criteria used to detect frailty, as well as in the way tools are evaluated.