UMEM Educational Pearls

Title: (Another) Tool to assess your older patient's prognosis

Keywords: FRAIL, geriatric, prediction tool, mortality, (PubMed Search)

Posted: 1/1/2026 by Robert Flint, MD (Updated: 1/6/2026)
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The Geriatric Measurement Tool combines the FRAIL Questionnaire with the Barthel Index For Daily Living to give a prognosis on your patient's mortality. First used to predict mortality in older patients with pneumonia during COVID-19 pandemic. Now being investigated for other ED patient populations.

FRAIL Questionnaire: Fatigue, Resistance, Aerobic, Illness, Weight loss. https://www.activeagingweek.com/pdf/abbott/FRAILQuestionnaire.pdf

Barthel: Ten questions about ADL's to create a score 0-100. https://www.mdcalc.com/calc/3912/barthel-index-activities-daily-living-adl

References

The Role of the Geriatric Measurement Tool in Predicting Clinical Outcomes Among Elderly Patient in the Emergency Department

Zaman, Süeda et al. Journal of Emergency Medicine, Volume 79, 560 - 567

2. Gómez-Moreno, C., Chacón-Corral, A.A., Pérez-Méndez, A. et al. Association between a geriatric measure tool and adverse outcomes among older adults treated in an emergency department: a retrospective cohort study. Intern Emerg Med 20, 2205–2213 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-024-03843-w