Preoperative frailty is a severely unhealthy status that reflects the reduction of overall physiological reserve, which is highly prevalent in elderly patients with gastric cancer. Understanding the perceived influencing factors of preoperative frailty can provide an important basis for developing individualized intervention plans.

To perform a qualitative descriptive study to identity the perceived influencing factors of preoperative frailty among elderly gastric cancer patients using the theory of health ecology.

A qualitative descriptive study was conducted based on health ecology theory. Purposive sampling method was used to select 29 frail elderly patients who would undergo gastric cancer surgery in the First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University from February to June 2021 for semi-structured interview. Directed content analysis was used for data analysis.

Five themes and thirteen sub-themes were extracted: physiological traits, including accumulated aging-related losses, obvious gastrointestinal symptoms, and successive attacks of multiple diseases; behavioral characteristics, including lack of exercise behavior and overexertion; interpersonal networks, including insufficient peer social interaction, lack of parent-child interaction, and lack of communication and self-disclosure between couples; living and working conditions, including heavy individual financial burden, heavy unplanned family care tasks, insufficient information resources for health and disease management; macro factors, including limited medical services and medical insurance support.

This study described the effects of different perceived factors on preoperative frailty among elderly gastric cancer patients from the perspective of health ecology. Medical workers should formulate and implement systematic prehabilitation programs based on the above factors to improve the patients' preoperative anti-stress capacity and postoperative outcomes.

术前衰弱是一种反映整体生理储备降低的严重负性状态，在老年胃癌患者中高发，描述患者感知的衰弱影响因素可为制订针对性干预方案提供重要依据。

基于健康生态学理论通过质性研究具体描述老年胃癌患者感知的术前衰弱影响因素。

基于健康生态学理论，通过描述性质性研究，利用目的抽样法选取2021年2—6月南京医科大学第一附属医院收治的拟行胃癌手术的29例老年衰弱患者进行半结构式访谈。运用定向内容分析法进行资料分析。

共提炼出5个主题及13个亚主题：（1）生理特质，包括老化相关损耗累积、消化道症状明显、多病打击持续；（2）行为特点，包括运动行为缺乏、体力活动消耗显著；（3）人际网络，包括同伴社交不足、亲子互动缺乏、夫妻间沟通及自我表露缺乏；（4）生活和工作条件，包括个人经济负担沉重、计划外家庭照顾任务繁重、健康与疾病管理信息资源不足；（5）宏观因素，包括医疗服务水平受限及医保支持力度受限。

本研究具体描述了健康生态学视角下老年胃癌患者所感知的不同维度因素对术前衰弱的影响，医护人员可基于上述多维因素制订及实施系统性的预康复方案，以有效提高老年胃癌患者的术前抗应激能力，改善术后结局。