Increasing disability-free life expectancy in frail elderly people is the main goal of geriatric medicine. Three ways of ageing may occur: common ageing including physiological decrease of some functions without heavy disability, pathological ageing with severe active diseases causing significant disability, and then frail ageing. Frailty is a status of vulnerability due to decreased functional reserves (Abellan 2008): a major impact may then result from a minor health event. The main consequence of frailty is therefore a high risk of adverse event (e.g.: falls, hospitalization, death) and a decreased autonomy (Fried 2001, Ensrud 2007, Ahmed 2007, Fried 2004, Boyd 2005). Frailty is expected (Fried 2001) when three or more out of those five criterions occur: losing weight unwillingly, feeling exhausted, having a decreased walking speed, losing muscle strength, getting sedentary. Some authors do use a wider definition adding psychosocial criterions to Fried's merely physical ones. According to Fried's definition, frailty reached 17 in prevalence in the 65+ home dwelling populations often European countries (Santos Eggimann 2009).
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