engleski

Nutritional Screening Model in Tertiary Medical Unit in Croatia

Malnutrition of hospitalized patients is often undetected and untreated due to poor awareness and insufficient knowledge of the attending hospital staff. Nutritional screening has not been part of the daily routine in Croatian hospitals. Our aim was to implement nutritional screening as part of the routine medical examination and to assess the nutritional risk at admission for all hospitalized patients. All patients hospitalized in departments of internal medicine in tertiary hospitals in Croatia were screened at entry using the Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002). Between October and December 2010, 1, 696 patients were screened and analyzed (948 males and 748 females). 329 (19.4%) had an NRS 2002 score ≥3 and were considered to be at nutritional risk. An NRS 2002 score ≥3 was identified as a significant predictor of the length of hospital stay (beta coefficient = 0.06, p = 0.027) and fatal outcome (OR = 6.18, p < 0.001). Only 32.8% of malnourished patients received some nutritional support. Every fifth patient hospitalized in a general medical department in Croatia is at nutritional risk and the majority of them does not receive nutritional support. More effort is needed to implement nutritional standards in daily clinical practice.

NRS 2002; malnutrition; nutritional screening; hospital

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