Nutritional risk in hospitalized elderly people as a determinant of clinical outcomes

• Autor(a) principal: Silva,Adriane dos Santos da
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Mannarino,Ida Cristina, Moreira,Annie S. Bello
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://ggaging.com/details/108
• topic: Elderly, nutritional risk, clinical outcomes.

<p><b>INTRODUCTION:</b> Malnutrition affects the patient's clinical conditions, and increases the risk of complications in elderly people, this is also responsible for the increase in the hospital stay length and mortality rate in this age group.<br> <b>OBJECTIVE:</b> To study the association between nutritional risk and clinical outcomes in elderly patients hospitalized at a medicine unit at a private hospital in Rio de Janeiro.<br> <b>MATERIALS AND METHODS:</b> A prospective study with 116 elderly patients. In the first 72 hours after hospital admission the Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS-2002) was applied, and anthropometric data such as weight and height and clinical diagnosis was collected; at the end of hospitalization, clinical outcomes (death, infection and length of stay) were also collected. Data was analyzed by SPSS and significance was considered less than 5%.<br> <b>RESULTS:</b> It was found that 39.6% of the patients were at nutritional risks in admission time. Patients at nutritional risk were older, had a body mass index (BMI) lower (p &lt;0.05) and with a chance of death three times higher. Patients who were hospitalized longer periods (&gt;13 days) have had a chance of developing infection or of dying three times higher.<br> <b>CONCLUSION:</b> Patients at nutritional risks had a higher risk of complications such as longer hospitalization, infection and death.</p>