Nutritional status at submission for dietetic services and screening for malnutrition at admission to hospital.

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links fieldThis paper presents two studies in a quality management project that aims to diminish malnutrition among hospitalized patients. The objective of study 1 was to investigate what information was available on the nutritional status of patients submitted for dietetic services for reasons other than obesity (n= 167) and of study 2 to evaluate a nine-question screening sheet for malnutrition in patients (n= 115) within 48 h of admission to the hospital. In study 1 sufficient data to evaluate nutritional status was found for 17% of the patients submitted for dietetic services. In study 2 the screening sheet identified 21% of the patients as malnourished and a full nutritional assessment of seven anthropometrical and biochemical measurements 20%. The screening sheet could be simplified to six questions and then had a sensitivity of 0.69, a specificity of 0.91 and a positive predictive value of 0.65. It is concluded that evaluation of nutritional status in hospitalized patients has been disregarded and a simple screening sheet can be used to identify patients in need of further nutritional assessment and treatment