An observational study in Frailty in Adult Surgery, Frail Elderly Syndrome and Database, sponsored by Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. Recruiting at 2 sites in Chile. Open to participants aged 18 Years and older. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2025-06-10.
Sponsored by Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile · Observational
Frailty is a multidimensional syndrome that predominantly affects older people and people with long-term treatments such as cancer and chronic pain. This results in an increased risk of disability, reduced resistance and greater vulnerability to stressors.
These factors culminate in worse postoperative outcomes, including higher rates of complications and mortality. With the current demographic shift towards an aging population in Latin America and Chile, the prevalence of frailty among surgical patients is increasing.
Despite the clear association between frailty and adverse postoperative effects, in Chile there are few centers that routinely perform objective preoperative frailty assessment before to surgery. This is due to logistical challenges, the need for specialized training, and assessment tools. As a result, frailty remains an underestimated syndrome in the perioperative setting.
Various interventions have been proposed to improve the care of fragile surgical patients. Prehabilitation, a multidisciplinary program designed to prepare patients for surgery and improve their resilience to surgical stress, has emerged as a promising intervention. Recent studies indicate that prehabilitation may lead to shorter hospital length of stay (LOS) and fewer complications.
Recognizing the vital role that frailty plays in surgical outcomes and the paucity of research on prehabilitation, a prehabilitation or timely presurgical conditioning program (Prepare for Your Surgery Program) has been implemented at our center. This proposal seeks to optimize the patient before a surgical intervention in order to reduce frailty and complications, thus improving recovery and medium-term results.
The program consists of interventions 4 to 6 weeks before surgery focused on: nursing assessment, screening and follow-up, geriatric and/or internal medicine assessment and intervention, physiotherapy assessment and intervention, nutrition assessment and intervention, psychological assessment and intervention, and preoperative anesthesiology intervention.
For this purpose, it has been proposed to create a prospective database of patients from the Prepare for Your Surgery Program, who undergo elective surgery at Hospital Clinico Red Salud UC-Christus.
Potential participants in the "Prepare for Your Surgery" program must complete the informed consent process, having met the inclusion criteria for this database. Demographic data will be collected from patients, including: date of birth, age, gender/sex, pathology for which they were admitted, comorbidities, treatment they receive, and proposed interventions according to their initial evaluation. In turn, the episode number will be stored, whether their pathology is covered by the public health system through Explicit Health Guarantees (GES) or not, the number of days hospitalized associated with the surgical episode, specialty to which it corresponds, and the type of surgery according to code. From the clinical part, the data from your medical record will be stored, specifically, the results of the application of the following tests and index calculations.
Regarding the program, it consists mainly of 7 stages:
The data to be obtained are clinically recorded and will be stored in the TrakCare program's own databases in the electronic record systems of the Hospital Clinico Red UC-CHRISTUS, surgical table (SAQ), SAP and other related systems. For data extraction, an encrypted data table associated with the "episode" numbering generated sequentially by the SAP care systems has been proposed. Each access to the "Patient Database: Prepare for Your Surgery Program" will be restricted by the team responsible for the database, which is accessed by means of a username and password with encrypted restrictions on the data generated.
To guarantee the confidentiality of the data, alternate identifiers will be used (example Male = 1, Female =2), which are codes associated with a case, which can bring together several episodes, to which numbers and letters are assigned, for which They are considered encrypted data without sensitive data. The encoded data can only be accessed by the responsible team who will guarantee the internal traceability of the data, safeguarding confidentiality and providing anonymized and/or encoded forms of the data collected. In addition, the data is kept linked to the clinical record servers which have their own backup and security systems within the services provided to the Hospital Clinico Red UC-CHRISTUS.
Once the number of participants is complete, the recorded data will be analyzed to describe the characteristics of the patients included in this type of program, evaluate key indicators such as adherence, participation and in the future generate improvements in implementation protocols, national or local policies and generate publications related to this topic.
1,199 studies on the registry are indexed under Frailty; 430 are open to participants now.
This study's planned enrollment of 120 is below the median of 223 across 496 observational studies indexed under Frailty.
Browse Frailty studies →Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile is the lead sponsor of 215 studies on the registry; 56 are open to participants now.
Counted across the registry records on this site, refreshed daily.
Patients who are users of the Hospital Clinico Red de Salud UC-Christus who are going to undergo elective surgery to be performed at the same center
Exclusion Criteria:
Patients referred to the Prepare for Your Surgery program
Other: Clinical data collection
Patient's data will be collected, including: date of birth, age, gender/sex, pathology for admission, comorbidities, treatment received, and proposed interventions based on initial assessment.
Establishment of a database
Establish a database to record the demographic characteristics, frailty and/or comorbidities and relevant preoperative history of patients referred to the "Prepare for your Surgery" program.
Time frame: 1 month
Registry of in-hospital history
Record surgical, anesthetic, hospital stay and/or relevant in-hospital history of patients admitted to the "Prepare for Your Surgery" program.
Time frame: 1 month
Patient Follow-Up
Record the characteristics of possible complications, rehospitalizations, mortality, and/or relevant histories of patients 3 to 6 months after hospital discharge, according to their surgical specialty.
Time frame: 3 - 6 months
Plan to share: No
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Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile