Use of the term frailty in the medical literature has increased significantly in the last 20 years. A MEDLINE search using the combined terms ‘frail’ and ‘elderly’ yielded 473 articles published between 1996 and 2001, compared with 85 between 1980 and 1985. This increasing interest in frailty has been fuelled by evidence that the ‘frail elderly’ are the group most likely to benefit from geriatric intervention programmes and by the close links between frailty and longer hospital stays, nursing home utilization and mortality.