Instruments to Measure Frailty in Patients with Heart Failure: a Narrative Review

Frailty is a common multidimensional syndrome in patients with heart failure (HF); it is associated with worse outcomes, including poor quality of life, disability, hospitalizations, and increased mortality. This narrative review critically summarizes the most widely used instruments in clinical practice for frailty assessment in HF, compares their strengths and limitations, and discusses their role in predicting adverse outcomes.

Various tools have been developed to assess frailty in the HF patient population, aiming to guide clinical decisions and improve patient management. These scoring systems vary in their complexity and applicability and follow two main different approaches (the Fried phenotype and the frailty index). Recently, a new Heart Failure Frailty Score (HFFS) specifically designed to assess frailty in HF patients has been proposed. Frailty is a critical prognostic modifier in HF, making its systematic assessment in clinical practice essential for guiding therapeutic decision-making and optimizing clinical outcomes in this vulnerable population.