Risk, prevalence, and impact of hospital malnutrition in a Tertiary Care Referral University Hospital: a cross-sectional study

Excerpt

Malnutrition is a high-impact condition in terms of public health. Hospital malnutrition (i.e., malnutrition in a healthcare setting) has been demonstrated to affect several major clinical outcomes, such as immune competence, wound healing, quality of life, risk of hospital infections, length of stay, risk of readmission, overall survival, and to be a striking economic burden for the health care system [1‐6]. Up until the present time, hospital malnutrition has a high prevalence rate all over the world that varies from 5 to 60% according to patients’ clinical conditions, geographical region, healthcare setting or hospital department and, remarkably, diagnosis criteria [1‐7]. A gap between the number of patients screened and diagnosed with malnutrition, receiving nutritional recommendations and those effectively malnourished remains much higher [8]. Indeed, sparse awareness and a low attention to this issue are present among healthcare professionals and governments [9,10]. Providing nutritional care through early and appropriate nutritional assessment and intervention has been shown to improve outcomes, particularly among high-risk elderly hospitalized patients. However, recent meta-analyzes conclude that there is low-quality evidence for the effects of nutritional support on mortality and serious adverse events [11], though a reduction in healthcare costs indeed exists [12]. …