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	Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment	SPPB
Field	Social Gerontology	Gerontology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1993	1994
Originator	Andreas E. Stuck, Laurence Z. Rubenstein and colleagues (meta-analytic synthesis)	Jack M. Guralnik
Type	Multidimensional interdisciplinary diagnostic and care-planning process	Performance-based assessment
Seminal source	Stuck, A. E., Siu, A. L., Wieland, G. D., Adams, J., & Rubenstein, L. Z. (1993). Comprehensive geriatric assessment: a meta-analysis of controlled trials. The Lancet, 342(8878), 1032-1036.	Guralnik, J. M., Simonsick, E. M., Ferrucci, L., et al. (1994). A short physical performance battery assessing lower extremity function: association with self-reported disability and prediction of mortality and nursing home admission. J Gerontol, 49(2), M85-M94.
Aliases	CGA, Geriatric Assessment, Multidimensional Geriatric Assessment, Interdisciplinary Geriatric Evaluation	SPPB
Related	3	5
Summary	Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is a multidimensional, interdisciplinary diagnostic process that evaluates an older person's medical, functional, cognitive, psychological, social, and environmental status and translates the findings into a coordinated, monitored plan of care. Rather than treating a single presenting complaint, CGA assumes that vulnerability in late life is multifactorial and that problems in one domain spill over into others. Stuck and colleagues' landmark 1993 meta-analysis of controlled trials showed that CGA is not merely descriptive: when it includes control over the implementation of recommendations and structured follow-up, it reduces mortality, increases the chance of living at home, and improves physical and cognitive function. The same synthesis clarified that assessment alone, without the power to act on findings and to follow patients over time, yields little benefit. CGA thus reframed geriatric care around systematic, team-based evaluation linked to action. It became the organizing model for geriatric medicine units, outpatient geriatric clinics, and home-assessment programs worldwide. The method is best understood as a process, not a single scale, even though it is built from many validated instruments.	The Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) is a performance-based assessment developed by Guralnik and colleagues in 1994 at the National Institute on Aging to measure lower extremity physical function and functional mobility in older adults. It is widely used in clinical practice and epidemiological research to predict disability, institutionalization, and mortality in community-dwelling seniors.