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Abdullah Alshibani,1– 3 Meshal Alharbi,1,2 Simon Conroy4 1Emergency Medical Services Department, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 2King Abdullah International Medical Research Center, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; 3Department of Health Sciences, College of Life Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK; 4MRC Lifelong Health & Ageing Unit, University College London, London, UKCorrespondence: Abdullah Alshibani, Emergency Medical Services Department, College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, 14611, Saudi Arabia, Email alshibania@ksau-hs.edu.saAbstract: The proportion of older adults is increasing worldwide. Frailty assessment in prehospital care was suggested to improve triage decisions and paramedics’ judgment. This study aimed to assess the scope and nature of available evidence around frailty identification in prehospital care. A systematic search of the literature was performed using MEDLINE, SCOPUS, CINHAL, and Web of Science to identify relevant articles published from January 2022 downwards. A list of indexed terms and their associated alternatives were pre-determined. Of the 71 identified and reviewed articles after removing duplicates, six articles were included in the review. Due to the heterogeneity of the included articles, the findings were described narratively. The findings of this review showed that the available evidence is limited and heterogenic. Two themes emerged from the findings of the included articles: 1) Paramedics’ Perceptions about Frailty Assessment in Prehospital Care and 2) Frailty Scores for Application in Prehospital Care. Paramedics recognised frailty assessment in pre-hospital care to be feasible and important. They highlighted the need for a simple and clear frailty score that could be used and mentioned to other healthcare professionals when handing over patients. Six frailty scores were reported to be used in prehospital care. The evidence around each frailty score is very limited. Overall, frailty assessment in prehospital care was shown to be important and feasible. Different frailty scores have been assessed for use in prehospital care. Further research investigating frailty identification in prehospital care is needed.Keywords: aging consumers, narrative analysis, health and well-being, paramedic*, emergency, older

Rainer Wirth,1,2 Rainer Dziewas,3 Anne Marie Beck,4 Pere Clavé,5 Shaheen Hamdy,6 Hans Juergen Heppner,7,8 Susan Langmore,9 Andreas Herbert Leischker,10 Rosemary Martino,11 Petra Pluschinski,12 Alexander Rösler,13 Reza Shaker,14 Tobias Warnecke,3 Cornel Christian Sieber,2,15 Dorothee Volkert2 1Department for Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, St Marien-Hospital Borken, Borken, Germany; 2Institute for Biomedicine of Aging, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Nürnberg, Germany; 3Department of Neurology, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany; 4Department of Nutrition and Health, Faculty of Health and Technology, Metropolitan University College, Copenhagen, Denmark; 5Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de enfermadades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBERehd), Hospital de Mataró, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Mataró, Spain; 6Centre for Gastrointestinal Sciences, Institute of Inflammation and Repair, University of Manchester, Salford Royal Hospital, Salford, UK; 7Department of Geriatrics, Witten- Herdecke University, 8Helios Clinic Schwelm, Schwelm, Germany; 9Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA; 10Department of Geriatrics, Alexianer Hospital Krefeld, Krefeld, Germany; 11Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; 12Department of Phoniatrics and Pediatric Audiology, University of Marburg, Marburg, Germany; 13Department of Geriatrics, Marien Hospital Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany; 14Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA; 15Department of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics, St John of God Hospital Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany Abstract: Oropharyngeal dysphagia (OD) is a highly prevalent and growing condition in the older population. Although OD may cause very severe complications, it is often not detected, explored, and treated. Older patients are frequently unaware of their swallowing dysfunction which is one of the reasons why the consequences of OD, ie, aspiration, dehydration, and malnutrition, are regularly not attributed to dysphagia. Older patients are particularly vulnerable to dysphagia because multiple age-related changes increase the risk of dysphagia. Physicians in charge of older patients should be aware that malnutrition, dehydration, and pneumonia are frequently caused by (unrecognized) dysphagia. The diagnosis is particularly difficult in the case of silent aspiration. In addition to numerous screening tools, videofluoroscopy was the traditional gold standard of diagnosing OD. Recently, the fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing is increasingly utilized because it has several advantages. Besides making a diagnosis, fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of therapeutic maneuvers and texture modification of food and liquids. In addition to swallowing training and nutritional interventions, newer rehabilitation approaches of stimulation techniques are showing promise and may significantly impact future treatment strategies. Keywords: aspiration, dehydration, dysphagia, geriatric, malnutrition, older