The Importance of Frailty in Stroke and How to Measure It

The term ‘frailty’ is used frequently in healthcare and has become topical for both research and clinical care. Although many clinicians report an intuition for identifying frailty, there is often uncertainty over what it actually represents, how it can be assessed, and what it may mean for the patient. This article provides a focused introduction to frailty for the stroke clinician-in-training (and for those more experienced), in particular the different approaches to evaluating frailty in the stroke setting.