Abstract

Author(s): Lorencet, Bárbara; Zaffari, Denise; Castilhos, Juliana; Campagnolo, Paula D

Introduction: The protocol Nutritional Risk Score 2002 was developed to identify the nutritional risk to propose an early and effective nutritional intervention.

Objective: To identify the nutritional risk of patients admitted to a general hospital and to evaluate the association between nutritional risk, length of hospital stay and mortality.

Method: Retrospective longitudinal study conducted in a general hospital that evaluated data from medical records of 8376 patients admitted to the medical and surgical clinic, of both sexes, aged over 18 years, from January to December 2014.

Results: The nutritional screening protocol was applied to 2255 patients (26.9%) and of these, 525 (23.3%) presented nutritional risk. Among the screened patients, 952 (42.2%) were admitted to the surgical unit and 1303 (57.8%) to the medical clinic. Length of hospital stay was significantly longer among patients with nutritional risk (p <0.001). The risk of death was 5.5 times higher in those patients who were at risk of malnutrition. It was identified that low weight, unintentional weight loss and decreased food intake were strongly associated with higher number of deaths and longer hospital stay.

Discussion: Focusing on performing early screening not only in inpatient units, but also in hospital emergency departments, may contribute to the increase in the number of screened patients, contributing to the reduction of negative outcomes.

Conclusions: The importance of greater attention to early nutritional screening was identified in order to identify, prevent and treat factors that may contribute to negative outcomes. The identification of the nutritional profile contributes to the creation of an action plan to promote more effective nutritional assistance.