Acute kidney injury in critical illness and long-term frailty: a new challenge for intensivists?

Frailty is an age-related syndrome that has emerged at the end of the last century in the geriatrician language and is defined as a decrease in the physiological reserves that results in increased vulnerability to a stressor event (1). In the elderly, this clinical syndrome is associated with an increased risk of adverse events, disability and premature death, and operational strategies have been developed to detect and fight the key determinants that compete with its development (2-4).