The Prognostic Utility of Frailty on the Outcomes of Primary Brain Tumor Surgery Patients: A Meta-Analysis

Background: Frailty refers to a state of weakness that can arise due to age or illnesses, and frailty predisposes individuals to several adverse health outcomes. This has been postulated to prognosticate the outcome of various surgeries, including surgeries for primary brain tumors; however, no meta-analysis has validated this finding.

Methods: We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the prognostic utility of frailty for the outcome of primary brain tumor surgery. We performed a systematic search of the PubMed, EMBASE, and SCOPUS databases for studies investigating the ability of frailty to predict the outcome of primary brain tumor surgery.

Results: Meta-analysis of the information provided in the thirteen studies that made up our sample. Hospital length of stay (effect size 0.94; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.37, 1.51; p: 0.00), postoperative complications (effect size 10.31; 95% CI: -5.88, 26.86; p: 0.21), readmission (effect size 0.82; 95% CI: 0.23, 1.41; p: 0.01), nonroutine discharge (effect size 1.07; 95% CI: 0.48, 1.65; 0.00), postoperative mortality (effect size 1.48; 95% CI: 0.81, 2.02; p: 0.00), and overall survival (effect size 1.53; 95% CI: 0.29, 2.76; p: 0.02).

Conclusions: This study showed little correlation with postoperative mortality, readmission, nonroutine discharge, length of hospital stay, or overall survival, and fragility had less significance in these areas but showed no statistical significance in predicting postoperative complications following surgery for primary brain tumors.