Impact of Frailty on Cardiovascular Disease (and the Other Way Around).

ABSTRACT

Cardiovascular disesase has been identified as the most frequent cause of death, while frailty has been identified as one of geriatric giants characterized by decreased physiological reserves and increased vulnerability. Despite of aggressive treatment for cardiovascular diseases such as invasive methods,frail patients who undergo these procedures tend to experience undesirable effects compared to non frail patients. As the population of elderly patiens worldwide is growing larger, these issues lead to major health problems that we have to overcome. Association between frailty and cardiovascular disease is still debatable. Cardiovascular disease accelerates frailty. On the other hand, frail patients have higher risk of cardiac mortality and major cardiac events due to their complex health status. However, by doing good risk prediction and assessment, interventional treatment can be performed safely in selected older patients. To date, only a few studies have been conducted to investigate relationship between these two major health problems in elderly. Therefore, in this edition we highlight a study which investigate association between frailty and major adverse cardiac events in patients who underwent invasive intervention. Further researches are still needed to establish evidences between these two geriatric major health problems.