Trajectories of nutritional status and cognitive impairment among older Taiwanese with hip fracture

This paper describes the trajectories of nutritional status and cognitive impairment and their correlation among older Taiwanese over 1 year after hip-fracture surgery.

Secondary analysis of data from a clinical trial evaluating the effects of three types of post-discharge care for 292 older hip-fracture patients (age >60 years).

Nutritional status was assessed by the Mini Nutritional Assessment before and 1, 3, 6, 12 months after hospital discharge. Cognitive function was measured by the Mini-Mental State Examination before surgery, at hospital discharge, 6 and 12 months after discharge. Trajectories of nutritional status and cognitive impairment were depicted by latent class growth modeling, whereas linkages between nutritional-status and cognitive-impairment trajectories were assessed by multinomial logistic regression.

Nutritional status in general improved significantly, particularly during the first 3 months after discharge. We identified three trajectories of nutritional status: malnourished (15.4%), at risk for malnutrition (38.9%), and well-nourished (45.7%). In contrast, cognitive changes followed four largely linear but distinct trajectories: moderately impaired (12.2%), mildly impaired (27.8%), borderline impaired (21.8%), and cognitively intact (38.2%). Trajectories of nutritional status were significantly associated with cognitive-function trajectories. For instance, relative to malnourished patients, well-nourished patients were 95% less likely (OR=0.05, CI =0.01-0.24) to be moderately cognitively impaired.

A good nutritional-status trajectory after hip fracture was associated with better cognitive function. To treat and care for elderly hip-fractured patients, specific interventions need to target those who are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition to decrease their risk for cognitive impairment.