Deciphering the cirrhotic patient’s present status: The overlap between physical frailty, disability, and sarcopenia

Abstract

It is increasingly recognized that factors beyond traditional measures of liver severity like the Model for End-Stage Liver Disease such as disability, frailty, and sarcopenia are important predictors of meaningful outcomes for patients with cirrhosis. Although each concept is measured in different ways with clinical utility that is context dependent, they share a common biology. Understanding the overlap between these measures informs practice in important ways. Underlying each factor is malnutrition, deconditioning, and hepatic encephalopathy. Interventions to forestall or rehabilitate markers such as disability, frailty, and sarcopenia will require a deliberate, multimodal approach geared toward their specific drivers.