Author Spotlight: Assessing Surgical Frailty with Point-of-Care Ultrasound of Quadriceps Muscles

Our research aims to assess frailty in surgical patients using point-of-care ultrasound measurements of the quadricep muscle. We seek to determine the accuracy of these measurements in predicting postoperative adverse events and their potential utility in clinical decision-making. Recent advancements in our field include the utilization of point-of-care ultrasound for bedside assessment of muscle mass and quality.

This approach offers a non-invasive and expeditious alternative to traditional imaging techniques, enhancing perioperative risk evaluation in surgical patients. Experimental challenges include optimizing image acquisition techniques for consistent and accurate measurement of quadriceps muscle thickness, as well as ensuring reproducibility across different operators and patient populations. Compared to other techniques, such as the Fried frailty assessment and CT imaging, this protocol offers the advantage of enhancing that efficiency in the preoperative area for identifying those patients at potentially higher surgical risk secondary to frailty.

In the future, our team will focus on further validating the use of point-of-care ultrasound and frailty assessment across different surgical populations and investigating interventions to improve outcomes in frail surgical patients.