Changes in frailty scores after surgery
Figure 4 shows the mean changes in frailty scores for frail, pre-frail and robust patients with both scales. Negative values indicate that patients are less frail 6 months after surgery and positive values indicate a postoperative deterioration of the frailty status.
The most negative change in frailty scores occurred in the group of frail patients. Pre-frail patients showed also negative changes in frailty scores as well, although these changes were less marked that in frail patients. Conversely, robust patients experimented a slightly positive change. This linear trend in the changes of frailty scores that can be graphically appreciated, was also statistically significative (p<0.01) in a linear regression model.