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Patterns of Care: An Analysis of the Quality of Nutritional Care Routinely Provided to Elderly Hospitalized Veterans
Author(s) -
Sullivan Dennis H.,
Sha Moriarty Mary,
Chernoff Ronni,
Lipschitz David A.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
journal of parenteral and enteral nutrition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.935
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1941-2444
pISSN - 0148-6071
DOI - 10.1177/0148607189013003249
Subject(s) - medicine , malnutrition , parenteral nutrition , enteral administration , prospective cohort study , medical nutrition therapy , intensive care medicine , emergency medicine , pediatrics
To assess the adequacy of the nutritional care provided, a prospective noninterventional study was carried out on 250 randomly selected patients aged 65 and over who were admitted to a Veterans Administration Hospital. Of this group, 97 patients (39%) were found to be at high risk of having clinically significant protein‐energy malnutrition. In 43 cases (17%), an assessment of the patient's nutritional status was not possible because the available data were inadequate. No patient had a diagnosis of malnutrition recorded on the problem list. Only 13 percent of the high‐risk patients received some form of nutrition support therapy; 10 (10%) received oral supplements, and four (4%) were started on enteral feedings. Patients who received enteral feedings experienced a high rate of complications resulting from use of the feeding tubes. Over all, none of the high risk study patients received optimal nutrition support therapy. These findings indicate that elderly patients hospitalized in the Veterans Administration hospital in this study are usually not screened appropriately for protein‐energy malnutrition, the diagnosis is frequently missed or ignored, and nutrition support therapy is underutilized and often ineffectually managed. ( Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition 13 :249–254, 1989)