Comparação entre métodos de avaliação nutricional em idosos assistidos em um Hospital Escola do Recife

Abstract

Introduction: Aging is a natural process, characterized by several alterations, classified in two ways: senescence and senility. Senescence is a progressive process of functional reserve decrease. Senility is characterized by the development of a pathological condition due to emotional stress, accidents or illness. Non-communicable chronic diseases (CNCD), such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus, among others, are predominant among the elderly. The evolution of the disease in the elderly contributes to the worsening of nutritional status, being essential the nutritional assessment and diagnosis at admission and during hospitalization, so that the patient does not present malnutrition during hospitalization and the malnourished do not aggravate his clinical condition. Thus, nutritional evaluation of the elderly should be performed in a judicious way, considering the changes in body composition resulting from the senescence process. Objective: To compare methods of nutritional assessment in the elderly. Methods: Cross-sectional study with elderly patients, both sexes and admitted to the wards of the Medical Clinic of the Instituto de Medicina Integral Prof. Fernando Figueira- IMIP, in Recife / PE, between February and July 2018. Clinical information and anthropometry were collected, such as: arm circumference (CB), calf circumference (CP), weight and height for calculating body mass index (BMI). To verify the force, the Palmar Hold Force (FPP) was used and finally the Mini Nutritional Assessment - MAN was applied. The static analyzes were done in the program SPSS, version 13.0. Differences with p <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The final sample consisted of 41 elderly of both genders, predominantly male. According to CB, 41.5% of the patients were malnourished and 12.2% were overweight / obese. According to CP, 43.9% were malnourished and 56.1% were eutrophic. The manual grip strength showed 51.2% of the patients at risk of depletion. The Mini Nutritional Assessment, verified 56.1% of patients at risk of malnutrition and 19.5% malnourished. CP was correlated with the variables IMC (0.006), CB (0.002), MAN (0.002) and FPM (p: 1.00). Conclusion: We observed a high percentage of nutritional risk and malnutrition in our population. All anthropometric parameters were associated with calf circumference (CP), except the MPF, which could improve the diagnosis and lead to an early nutritional intervention.