Malnutrition Screening in Primary Health Care

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Paulo André
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Outros Autores: Roque, Ana Carolina, Sacramento, Ana Luísa, Valentim, Bruno, Vieira Gonçalves, Catarina, Lourenço, Cristiane, Leite Costa, Fábio, Roque, Joana, Grácio, João, Agrela, Pedro, Lopes, Pedro Tiago, Ramos de Sousa, Ricardo, Viana, Rita, Ferreira, Vítor Hugo, Cleto Marinho, Ricardo, Veríssimo, Manuel, Tarantino, Silvia, Marinho, Aníbal
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.24950/rspmi.1055
• topic: Avaliação Nutricional; Cuidados de Saúde Primários; Envelhecimento; Estado Nutricional; Idoso; Malnutrição/diagnóstico; Aged; Aging; Malnutrition/diagnosis; Nutrition Assessment; Nutritional Status; Primary Health Care

In the community, malnutrition is manifested by the loss of muscle mass, being associated with a decrease in muscle strength, an increased risk of frailty, functional impairment and impaired healing of chronic wounds, as well as a higher incidence of infections. It is estimated that malnutrition affects one in three elderly people at home and one in three patients in elderly care institutions. Malnutrition is reversible as long as the patient has access to timely nutritional screening that identifies their nutritional risk and as long as an individualized nutritional intervention is instituted. Disease associated malnutrition continues to be perceived as a secondary problem in primary health care, so the implementation of nutritional risk screening, as a routine parameter, is the first step in improving access to nutritional care in the community. In this article, the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool is proposed for routine nutritional screening in primary care.