Assessment of Older Patients with Cancer: Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) As a Predictor of Adverse Outcomes in Older Patients Undergoing Radiotherapy

Introduction: In recent years, geriatric oncologists have been investigating the usefulness of a comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) tool to assess an elderly patient's suitability for treatment. The CGA is an extensive multi-disciplinary assessment tool, which takes about an hour per patient for assessment. As this is often unfortunately not possible in a busy oncological setting, shorter, less time consuming assessment tools have been proposed in recent years to assess older patients' suitability for treatment, such as the Edmonton-Frail-Score. The Edmonton Frail Scale (EFS) is a brief, valid, reliable, bedside screening test that can be completed by a lay researcher, or health care professional, and aims to measure frailty. We have picked the EFS as an assessment tool as it is a very short test, taking only about 5 min. It includes all the main areas that a comprehensive geriatric assessment would assess, such as cognitive status, social well-being, physical fitness, additional medical conditions, patient level of independence and nutritional status.