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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Jan 27, 2016; 8(1): 27-40
Published online Jan 27, 2016. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v8.i1.27
Role of frailty and sarcopenia in predicting outcomes among patients undergoing gastrointestinal surgery
Doris Wagner, Mara McAdams DeMarco, Neda Amini, Stefan Buttner, Dorry Segev, Faiz Gani, Timothy M Pawlik
Doris Wagner, Mara McAdams DeMarco, Neda Amini, Stefan Buttner, Dorry Segev, Faiz Gani, Timothy M Pawlik, Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD 21287, United States
Mara McAdams DeMarco, Department of Epidemiology, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, MD 21287, United States
Author contributions: Wagner D, DeMarco MM, Amini N and Pawlik TM study concept and design; Wagner D, DeMarco MM, Amini N, Buttner S, Gani F and Pawlik TM acquisited analysis or interpretation of data; all authors contributed to the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Timothy M Pawlik, MD, MPH, PhD, FACS, Professor, Chief, Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Blalock 688, Baltimore, MD 21287, United States. tpawlik1@jhmi.edu
Telephone: +1-410-5022387 Fax: +1-410-5022388
Received: June 24, 2015
Peer-review started: June 24, 2015
First decision: September 17, 2015
Revised: September 19, 2015
Accepted: October 20, 2015
Article in press: October 27, 2015
Published online: January 27, 2016
Processing time: 211 Days and 11.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: It is estimated that by the year 2030, 36 million Americans > 65 years will require surgery. Frailty as defined by a clinically recognizable state of increased vulnerability due to physiologic stressors resulting from aging has been associated with a decreased physiologic reserve and function across multiple physiological systems. Recently, a loss of muscle mass or sarcopenia has been proposed as an accurate and quantitative global marker of frailty. The current review demonstrates that frailty as defined by sarcopenia can be accurately used as a preoperative predictor of poor short- and long-term postoperative outcomes following complex gastrointestinal surgery.