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PurposeThe frailty concept has become a fundamental part of daily clinical practice. In this study our purpose was to create a risk estimation method with a comprehensive aspect of patients' preoperative frailty.Patients and methodsIn our prospective, observational study, patients were enrolled between September 2014 and August 2017 in the Department of Cardiac Surgery and Department of Vascular Surgery at Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary. A comprehensive frailty score was built from four main domains: biological, functional-nutritional, cognitive-psychological and sociological. Each domain contained numerous indicators. In addition, the EUROSCORE for cardiac patients and the Vascular POSSUM for vascular patients were calculated and adjusted for mortality.ResultsData from 228 participants were included for statistical analysis. A total of 161 patients underwent vascular surgery, and 67 underwent cardiac surgery. The preoperatively estimated mortality was not significantly different (median: 2.700, IQR (interquartile range): 2.000–4.900 vs. 3.000, IQR: 1.140–6.000, P = 0.266). The comprehensive frailty index was significantly different (0.400 (0.358–0.467) vs. 0.348 (0.303–0.460), P = 0.001). In deceased patients had elevated comprehensive frailty index (0.371 (0.316–0.445) vs. 0.423 (0.365–0.500), P < 0.001). In the multivariate Cox model an increased risk for mortality in quartiles 2, 3 and 4 compared with quartile 1 as a reference was found (AHR (95% CI): 1.974 (0.982–3.969), 2.306 (1.155–4.603), and 3.058 (1.556–6.010), respectively).ConclusionThe comprehensive frailty index developed in this study could be an important predictor of long-term mortality after vascular or cardiac surgery. Accurate frailty estimation could make the traditional risk scoring systems more accurate and reliable.