Background

Nutritional risk screening enables the risk of malnutrition to be detected from its beginning and before its clinical expression.

Objective

To demonstrate the usefulness of CONUT in nutritional screening at admission to a medium-to-long stay hospital.

Methods

Two longitudinal studies (2014n=121-2018n=155) were conducted using CONUT for the early detection of the risk of malnutrition and to evaluate the efficacy of the nutritional intervention. The response variables were the type and degree of malnutrition at admission and discharge.

Results

The prevalence of malnutrition/nutritional risk detected with CONUT at admission was 85.9%. With the Comprehensive Nutritional Assessment (CNA), the prevalence of malnutrition at admission was 81.0% (caloric malnutrition 5%, mixed malnutrition 17.4%, and protein malnutrition 58.7%). 5% of the patients at risk detected by CONUT still could not be diagnosed by the CNA. The values at discharge were caloric malnutrition 5%, mixed malnutrition 7.7%, and protein malnutrition 36.4%. CONUT enabled the evolution of the malnourished patient to be identified and followed up with greater sensitivity when compared to the anthropometric parameters. Nutritional intervention reduced the prevalence and severity of malnutrition, essentially improving it upon protein malnutrition correction. Malnourished patients showed a greater number of diagnostic categories. Significant differences were observed among the nutritional profiles of the most prevalent diseases.

Conclusions

CONUT enabled nutritional screening to be efficiently automated. The application of a structured protocol for the detection, monitoring and treatment of malnutrition made it possible to identify subsidiary patients to benefit from nutritional support, which was reflected in an improvement in nutritional status at discharge.

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