Virtual reality as a potential tool to face frailty challenges

The aging population and the corresponding increase in age-related diseases present scientific community and public health authorities with imminent challenges. One of these challenges deals with a deeper understanding of functional status of elderly in order to prevent and/or delay the onset of late-life disability (Rodríguez-Artalejo and Rodríguez-Mañas, 2014). The syndrome of “frailty” has been recently introduced in literature to specifically characterize the health of older individuals who deserve special attention because of their increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes (Afilalo et al., 2010). Although there is not a unique definition of frailty (Morley et al., 2013), the majority of studies refers to the five operational criteria (Fried et al., 2001): decreased gait speed, reduced grip strength, prolonged and unmotivated exhaustion, low physical activity, unintended weight loss. The problem of different definitions leads also to a large variation in reported prevalence rates, which range approximately from 5 to 60% (Collard et al., 2012). However, this multifaceted decline in different physiological systems make frail older individuals progressively more exposed to stressors (Clegg et al., 2013), making urgent the need for better care interventions