Authors

María del Carmen Gómez Sánchez

Position

Universitario 12 de Octubre de Madrid. Graduada en Enfermería. Máster de Investigación en Cuidados (UCM). 

Contact address

Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre. Medicina Interna. Avenida de Córdoba, s/n. 28041 Madrid.

Contact email: mcgomez@enf.ucm.es

Abstract

Hospital malnutrition is a problem of public health care that constitutes an area of interest, due to its high prevalence and high costs. Is estimated to affect 30 million patients in Europe and costs about 170 billion per year to the national health system, nevertheless, it remains underestimated and poorly detected by the health team.
Early detection of nutritional risk in hospitalized patients should be a priority of nursing care provision and has to be followed by a nutritional treatment plan appropriate to the circumstances of each patient.
In this paper we describe the common causes of malnutrition in the hospitalised patient and the available easy to use screening methods of proven utility and a high degree of agreement among them.
It would be interesting to apply all the advances that technology provides, putting them to the service of improving the health of citizens, including in the admission assessment, a hospital malnutrition screening­ by installing this application in online nursing management IT programs.

Keywords:

assessment of the patient; hospital malnutrition; nursing care; nutritional screeningprevention

Versión en Español

Título:

Cribado de desnutrición hospitalaria