OBJECTIVES To validate a nutritional intervention programme for elderly people living in nursing homes. DESIGN In a prospective, randomized, controlled study of 88 residents, we determined nutritional status at day 0 and day 60 using a record of dietary intake, anthropometry, hand-grip strength and mini-nutritional assessment. Dietary intake, grip strength and body weight were also recorded a...

Nutritional assessment can be incorporated into the assessments performed daily by the critical care nurse for every patient. Identification of nutritional deficits will lead to timely interventions and will facilitate recovery and early discharge. The metabolic responses to starvation and stress are reviewed, and bedside techniques for nutritional assessment are outlined. General guidelines fo...

The measurement of selected anthropometric, biochemical and immunological variables, and clinical judgment can be used to assess nutritional state. Nutritional assessment has three main aims: to define the type and severity of malnutrition; to identify high risk patients; to monitor the efficacy of nutritional support. The problems associated with the various methods to assess the nutritional s...

BACKGROUND Up to 65% of elderly patients are protein-energy undernourished at admission or acquire nutritional deficits while hospitalised. OBJECTIVES The aims of this project were: 1) to assess the quality of care concerning nutrition among geriatric units; 2) to assess the impact of implementive nutritional interventions on nutritional status and on the length of hospitalisation. DESIGN T...

Protein-energy undernutrition, or the possibility of its development, has been documented to occur frequently in surgical patients admitted to hospital. Nutritional status is known to deteriorate over the course of the hospital stay, with poor awareness by medical and nursing staff as to the deleterious effects of impaired nutritional status on clinical outcome and hospital costs. While there i...

BACKGROUND Up to 65% of elderly patients are protein-calorie undernourished at admission or acquire nutritional deficits while hospitalized. The aims of this project were: (a) to assess the quality of care concerning nutrition among Belgian geriatric units, (b) to include more routinely nutritional assessments and interventions in comprehensive geriatric assessment, and (c) to assess the impact...

The measurement of habitual food and energy intake in man is one of the hardest tasks a physiologist can undertake. There are three basic problems: firstly, the accurate determination of the subject’s customary intake; secondly, the conversion of this information to energy and nutrient intakes; and, thirdly, the length of time food intake should be measured before the information obtained can b...

Undernutrition is a quite common condition in the elderly, often identified using the mini nutritional assessment (MNA) test. The aim of this research was to study the independent value of the global and the subjective MNA questions to predict undernutrition according to the full MNA score, and to analyze the influence of gender and age on such items. A total of 22,007 Spanish people 65 years o...

[Purpose] In this study, we sought to evaluate the relationship between the Barthel Index and the Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form in a cohort of elderly patients hospitalized in the General Rehabilitation Center. [Subjects and Methods] Three hundred and forty-four patients underwent an extensive evaluation, which included the following tests: 1) a Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form t...