Frailty as a prognostic indicator of outcomes after brain tumor surgery: a meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Frailty, a state of diminished physiological reserve, may influence outcomes after brain tumor surgery. This meta-analysis synthesized evidence on the association between preoperative frailty and postoperative outcomes in patients with brain tumors. METHODS: and explored through subgroup analyses. GRADE assessed certainty of evidence. RESULTS: 90-99%) limits interpretability of pooled estimates. Subgroup analyses showed variation in effect sizes, but residual heterogeneity remained unexplained. GRADE certainty was low to very low for all outcomes except readmission (moderate). CONCLUSIONS: Frailty is consistently associated with adverse outcomes after brain tumor surgery, but extreme heterogeneity precludes precise quantitative risk prediction. Subgroup analyses attempting to compare slow-growing versus aggressive tumor types predominantly revealed an absence of stratified reporting in the primary literature.