Malnutrition of patients at hospital admission: prevalence and importance of early detection

Abstract

It was reported that worldwide prevalence of hospital malnutrition (HM) depends on several factors, such as a patient's diagnosis, age, indicators of food availability, access to them and their consumption, indicators of nutritional status (body measurements, mortality rates and clinical and biochemical data) [1,2]. HM ranges between 25% and 50% and it is certainly alarming in emerging regions such as Latin America. In this population, a higher prevalence was observed in people older than 60 years old [3]. An increase in global population aging has been observed recently as a substantial and permanent rise in the number of elderly people in relation to the rest of the population. Therefore, the risk of malnutrition in older adults is expected to increase in parallel to the predicted life expectancy global increase [4]. Also, the prevalence of malnutrition is a situation of concern whereby a coordinated intervention is needed, with specific objectives of nutritional status in those patients who present acute or chronic diseases and identify themselves as complex in hospital admissions [5]. Most frequent pathologies associated with malnutrition were those of neoplastic, respiratory and cardiovascular origin. Some studies have shown that the departments of internal medicine and intensive care showed the highest percentage of malnourished patients [6]. However, malnutrition can also develop due to other factors such as therapeutic procedures, lack of coverage in the hospital system on the nutritional requirements of patients, and limited records of nutritional status in the clinical history. This could lead to a failure to detect malnutrition *Correspondence to: Ana M Balaszczuk, Cátedra de Fisiología, Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina, E-mail: narreche@ffyb.uba.ar