Compare methods

	SARC-F Sarcopenia Screen	Vulnerable Elders Survey-13
Field	Social Gerontology	Social Gerontology
Family	Latent structure	Latent structure
Year of origin	2013	2001
Originator	Theodore K. Malmstrom and John E. Morley (Saint Louis University)	Debra Saliba, Neil S. Wenger and colleagues (RAND / ACOVE project)
Type	Self-report sarcopenia case-finding questionnaire	Function-based vulnerability screening scale
Seminal source	Malmstrom, T. K., & Morley, J. E. (2013). SARC-F: A Simple Questionnaire to Rapidly Diagnose Sarcopenia. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 14(8), 531-532.	Saliba, D., Elliott, M., Rubenstein, L. Z., Solomon, D. H., Young, R. T., Kamberg, C. J., Roth, C., MacLean, C. H., Shekelle, P. G., Sloss, E. M., & Wenger, N. S. (2001). The Vulnerable Elders Survey: A Tool for Identifying Vulnerable Older People in the Community. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 49(12), 1691-1699.
Aliases	SARC-F, SARC-F questionnaire, Strength Assistance Rising Climbing Falls screen	VES-13, Vulnerable Elders Survey, VES-13 screening tool
Related	3	3
Summary	SARC-F is a brief, five-item self-report questionnaire for case-finding of sarcopenia — the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and function — in older adults. Introduced by Theodore Malmstrom and John Morley in 2013, its name is an acronym for the five domains it assesses: Strength, Assistance in walking, Rising from a chair, Climbing stairs, and Falls. Each item is scored 0 to 2, giving a total from 0 to 10, and a score of 4 or higher signals likely sarcopenia and risk of poor functional outcomes. Because it requires no equipment, no clinician, and under a minute to complete, SARC-F is recommended by major consensus groups (including the European and Asian sarcopenia working groups) as the first step in sarcopenia case-finding, to be confirmed by muscle-strength and mass measurement.	The Vulnerable Elders Survey-13 (VES-13) is a brief, function-based screening tool that identifies community-dwelling older adults at increased risk of health deterioration, functional decline, and death. Developed by Debra Saliba, Neil Wenger, and colleagues at RAND as part of the Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE) project and published in 2001, the VES-13 scores 13 items spanning age, self-rated health, six physical-function tasks, and five activities of daily living. Points are weighted and summed to a maximum of 10, and a total of 3 or more classifies a person as 'vulnerable' — a status associated in the validation cohort with a roughly fourfold greater risk of functional decline or death over two years. It takes under five minutes, can be self-completed by phone or mail, and requires no clinician, which has made it a workhorse triage instrument in geriatrics and geriatric oncology.