Oral nutritional supplements intake and nutritional status among inpatients admitted in a tertiary hospital

Malnutrition is very common in hospitals and inpatients with prescription of oral nutritional supplementation have improvement of the nutritional status. To detect the total acceptance rate and a possible association between oral nutritional supplements intake and nutritional status. A cross-sectional study was carried out among 398 inpatients. Fifteen types of supplements were analyzed and nutritional status was detected by Subjective Global Assessment (SGA). Rest-ingestion index (RI) was obtained and Modified Poisson's regression was used to detect associations between nutritional status and intake of nutritional supplements. The prevalence of malnutrition was 43.7% and overall acceptance of supplements was around 75%. Industrialized supplements have better acceptance among well-nourished inpatients and patients who ate less than 80% of the supplement offered (industrialized or homemade) had higher risk for malnutrition (48%). There was an association between oral nutritional supplements intake and nutritional status, despite the good acceptance rate.