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Malnutrition in acutely unwell hospitalized elderly - “The skeletons are still rattling in the hospital closet”

  • Published:
The journal of nutrition, health & aging

Abstract

Introduction

Malnutrition is common in hospitalized patients with prevalence rates of up to 30% in Australian hospitals with adverse consequences for both the patients and health care services. Despite formulation of nutritional screening protocols, not all hospitalized patients get nutritional screening. Real life screening rates of hospitalized elderly patients are unknown.

Aim

The present study explored nutrition screening rate in acutely unwell elderly patients admitted in a large tertiary hospital and how these patients fared depending upon their nutrition status.

Methods

A prospective cross-sectional study involving 205 general medical patients ≥60years recruited between November 2014 and November 2015. The number of patients who missed nutrition screening were noted and all patients underwent nutritional assessment by a qualified dietitian using PG-SGA and quality of life was measured using EQ-5D 5L. A survival curve was plotted and multivariate cox proportional hazard model was used to adjust for confounders.

Results

Only 99 (49.7%) patients underwent nutritional screening. One hundred and six (53.5%) patients were confirmed as malnourished by PG-SGA. Malnourished patients had significantly longer length of hospital stay and had worse quality of life. Mortality was significantly higher in malnourished patients at one year (23 (21.7%) vs 4 (4.3%); p<0.001) and cox proportional hazard model suggests that malnutrition significantly affects survival even after adjustment for confounders like age, sex, Charlson index and polypharmacy.

Conclusion

This study confirms that nutrition screening is still suboptimal in elderly hospitalized patients with adverse consequences and suggests need for review of policies to improve screening practices.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Medicine, Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Y. Sharma

  2. School of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Y. Sharma

  3. Discipline of Medicine, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    C. Thompson

  4. Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    R. Shahi

  5. Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    P. Hakendorf

  6. Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Michelle Miller

Authors
  1. Y. Sharma
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  2. C. Thompson
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  3. R. Shahi
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  4. P. Hakendorf
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  5. Michelle Miller
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michelle Miller.

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Sharma, Y., Thompson, C., Shahi, R. et al. Malnutrition in acutely unwell hospitalized elderly - “The skeletons are still rattling in the hospital closet”. J Nutr Health Aging 21, 1210–1215 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-017-0903-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12603-017-0903-6

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