Agreement between nutritional screening instruments in hospitalized older patients

Abstract

– Background – The prevalence of hospitalized elderly patients has grown substantially and has impacted the hospital health services. Thus, it is believed that an investigation of the nutritional status associated with different clinical situations in elderly patients could contribute to multidis-ciplinary hospital intervention and nutritional care actions suitable for this population. Objective – To investigate the relationship between two nutritional screening instruments in hospitalized older patients and to compare clinical variables between these two instruments. Methods – Retrospective study with hospitalized older patients (n=277), investigating the agreement between two nutritional screening instruments. The data were analyzed using the McNemar, chi-square, Fisher, Mann-Whitney tests and the kappa coefficient for the agreement assessment. Results – There was a significant difference (P=0.0002) between the nutritional risk classifications of the two nutritional screening instruments and moderate agreement (k=0.5430) between them. The association between nutritional risk screening and age (P=0.0255), length of hospital stay (P<0.0001), gender (P=0.0365) and illness (P=0.0001) were assessed. There was an association between Mini Nutritional Assessment and length of stay (P<0.0001), illness (P=0.0001) and body weight evolution (P=0.0479). Conclusion – The nutritional risk screening and Mini Nutritional Assessment showed moderate agreement in the assessment of elderly patients.