Abstract

PARDO-GARCIA, Isabel; AMO-SAUS, Elisa; MARTINEZ VALERO, Ana Pilar  and  ESCRIBANO-SOTOS, Francisco. Cost associated with malnutrition prior to disease and disease-related malnutrition in the elderly: a systematic review. Nutr. Hosp. [online]. 2017, vol.34, n.5, pp.1215-1225. ISSN 1699-5198.  https://dx.doi.org/10.20960/nh.1058.

Introduction: Malnutrition is a health problem which affects a high percentage of old people since the physical and psychosocial changes common to this period of life favor it in this group. In addition, aging population has a high prevalence of chronic illnesses and acute pathologies which can affect their nutritional state negatively, leading to malnutrition related to illness. Objective: The aim of this systematic revision was to analyze the economic costs related to malnutrition in old people and to discover whether there were differences between economic costs of pre-existing malnutrition prior to illness and malnutrition because of disease. Method: A bibliographic search was carried out in the databases of Pubmed, Web of Science and Scopus, for the period between 2000 and 2016. Results: A total of 1,001 articles were found and 19 were selected using inclusion criteria. Of these, eleven analyzed the costs of pre-existing malnutrition prior to illness, seven analyzed the costs of malnutrition related to illness and one, both situations. Conclusions: In general, malnutrition increased health costs as a result of hospital admissions, greater number of readmissions and greater demand on health resources. Moreover, in the studies analyzed, pre-existing malnutrition prior to illness implied greater costs than those related to the actual illness; therefore, it would be convenient to establish selection and preventive policies on malnutrition in old people.

Keywords : Malnutrition; Disease-associated malnutrition; Elderly; Costs; Nutritional supplements; Health economics.

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