Frailty ; Practice Guideline ; Aging ; Primary Health Care
Abstract
With aging becoming a global issue, the interest in healthy aging has increased as well. Healthy aging focuses on maintaining the functions and wellbeingof the elderly rather than merely treating their medical conditions. Thus, the management of frailty, which is characterized by theaccumulation of functional declines, is important for achieving healthy aging. To develop clinical practice guidelines for frailty managementapplicable in primary care settings, the adaptation method was used and completed in the following three phases: (1) preparation (organizingcommittees and establishing scope of development); (2) literature screening and evaluation (selection of clinical practice guidelines for adaptationand evaluation using the Korean Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II); and (3) confirmation of recommendations (three rounds ofDelphi consensus, and internal and external reviews). A total of 16 recommendations were made through the guideline development process. Fordiagnosis and assessment, five recommendations related to screening, diagnosis, and assessment of frailty were included. Intervention andmonitoring included 11 recommendations regarding polypharmacy, physical activities, nutrition and oral health, vitamins and hormones, cognitivefunction, fall, social frailty, and monitoring. These clinical practice guidelines provide overall guidance on the identification, evaluation, intervention,and monitoring of frailty, applicable in primary care settings. With the growing importance of aging and healthy aging, the clinical usefulness ofthese guidelines is also expected to increase.