Garcés García-Espinosa L, Argüelles BD, Cabrera VL, de la Cruz HD, de la Guardia LE

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 18-27
PDF size: 490.20 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Rationale: Invariance of hospital malnutrition as a health problem might be due to the way food and nutritional care is conducted in those patients requiring them. Objective: To describe how food and nutritional care is provided to patients admitted to a university general hospital. Material and method: Clinical charts from 100 patients (Males: 54.0%; Ages ≥ 60 years: 40.0%; Length of hospital stay ≥ 15 days: 28.0%) that were surveyed between November 2014 and November 2015 (both included) in different wards of “General Calixto García Íñiguez” Teaching Hospital (General Surgery: 29.0%; Internal Medicine: 28.0%) during the second edition of the ELAN Study (Malnutrition rate: 32.0%) were audited in order to describe the hospital exercises of nutritional assessment, oral supplementation, and artificial nutrition. Results: Fifteen-point-zero percent of the surveyed patients fulfilled an indication for nutritional support (median of 11 categories; extreme values: 1.0 – 73.3%). In spite of the current hospital malnutrition rate, patient´s nutritional status was annotated in less than half of the clinical charts, while height and weight values on admission were recorded in half of them. Oral supplementation was not considered as an option for nutritional care, notwithstanding the fact that a fifth of the surveyed patients might have benefitted from it. Rate of use of artificial nutrition was 5.6%. Conclusions: Current state of hospital malnutrition is in contrast with the low rate of use of nutritional care provided to the patient during admission. Recommendations: A policy of institutional reach establishing, managing and educating work teams in the “Food and Nutrition Good Practices” of the hospitalized patient is needed.