Malnutrition: a disease found in the hospital setting

Aims: To examine the associations between the diagnosis of nutritional status by objective and subjective methods, hospital length of stay, and the age of hospitalized patients in a public hospital in Sergipe, northeastern Brazil. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of adult and elderly patients hospitalized between July and September 2013. The following parameters were investigated: age, length of hospital stay, and anthropometric measurements, namely, waist circumference, midarm circumference, triceps skinfold, body mass index, arm muscle circumference, and corrected arm muscle area. The nutritional status was determined by subjective global assessment and mini-nutritional assessment. Volunteers who received exclusive oral feeding were selected. Pearson’s chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test and Spearman’s correlation coefficient were used for the statistical analysis. The level of significance was set at 5% (p ≤0.05). Results: A total of 100 patients, 70 adults and 30 elderly individuals, both male and female, with a mean age of 51.60±14.38 years, were included in the study. Fifty-seven (57%) patients were in hospital for less than 15 days. The prevalence of malnutrition was detected as follows: 58% by midarm circumference, 73% by corrected arm muscle area, and 69% by arm muscle circumference. The subjective assessment revealed that 49 (49%) patients were suffering from malnutrition. Among elderly patients, 13 (43.3%) were overweight, according to the body mass index. Conclusions: The anthropometric and subjective parameters used to assess nutritional status led to different diagnoses, thus confirming the importance to use more than one method for detecting malnutrition in the hospital setting. Although malnutrition is prevalent in hospitalized patients, overweight is also found, indicating nutrition transition in this population.