Desempenho ocupacional em atividades de vida diária de pessoas com desnutrição crônica internadas em enfermarias de clínica médica

: Introduction: Malnutrition is configured as a health condition that causes deficits in occupational performance. Objective: To establish a correlation between nutritional status and occupational performance in activities of daily life (ADLs) according to the desnutrition state level. Methodology: A descriptive, exploratory, cross-sectional evaluation of 50 patients diagnosed with chronic malnutrition admitted to a University Hospital in Curitiba, Parana state. We used the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) and a semi-structured questionnaire in which the subjects named the three main performance limiting reasons. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to identify the existence of differences between at least two groups in the analysis, while the test of Multiple Comparisons was used to determine which pairs of groups showed statistically significant differences at 95% significance level (p ≤ 0.05). Results: We assessed 28 (56%) female and 22 (44%) male patients with mean age of 50.16 (±16.74) for one year. Out of these, 19 (38%) presented mild chronic malnutrition, 16 (32%) showed moderate chronic malnutrition, and 14 (28%) presented severe chronic malnutrition. We identified changes particularly in activities evaluated in the use of motor FIM, with relevant alterations of dependence level for the states of moderate to severe malnutrition. Patients’ complaints were in agreement with those pointed by the literature as symptoms of malnutrition. Conclusion: This study confirms the correlation between deterioration in nutritional status and high dependence level upon ADLs