Abstract

Author(s): Rocha de Almeida, Rebeca1; Ferreira Cândido de Sousa, Márcia2

Introduction: Nutritional state commitment of hospitalized patients can be onset by several factors, potentially related to prolonged fasting periods. The prolonged fasting for examinations implies in complaints, besides hydroelectric unbalance, metabolic and nutritional risk.

Goal: Evaluate fasting periods for exams and nutritional state through anthropometric and biochemical indicators in hospitalized patients from a teaching hospital in the northeast of Brazil.

Methods: The current study has a transversal model with hospitalized patients in a teaching hospital, during the period between March to June of 2015. Patients were evaluated in two distinct moments: the period before fasting for the first examination and in hospital discharge. Nutritional state of patients were estimated using nutritional screening, anthropometric and biochemical data, hospitalization period, number of episodes in which the patient was submitted to fasting and admission diagnostic. Data were analyzed in SPSS 18.0 software. The Nutritional State Evaluation of the sample was carried out by paired Student t test, association was verified by Pearson Correlation test, considering significance level of 5%.

Results: 34 patients were analyzed with an average age of 50.4 ± 16.4 years, being 53% male. The main admission diagnostic were infectious diseases (26.5%) and cancer (23.5%). A high proportion of malnourished patients was found using SGA and MNA. The average hospitalization period was of 18 ± 9 days and it was seen that this period was directly related to final BMI of adults (r = 0.830; p < 0.001) and elderlies (r = 0.990; p < 0.001). Fasting periods for examinations was around 13.84 ± 3.65 hours and this was related to final adult BMI (r = 0.602; p < 0.001).

Conclusions: Average fasting period in the exams was superior to conventional, the sample showed a high prevalence of malnourishment and the study highlights the importance of further developing research on fasting for exams and the influence in nutritional state in hospitalized patients besides the relevance of methods used in prevention of complications associated to malnourishment which would further allow the implementation of early nutritional therapy.