Efeito da avaliação nutricional sobre o tempo de internação hospitalar: revisão sistemática.

Abstract

Introduction. Malnutrition in hospitalized patients correlates with increased frequency of clinical complications and mortality, as well as being associated with prolonged hospitalization, increased risk of infections and increased costs to the health service. Objectives. a) Develop a systematic review on the effect of nutritional status on length of hospital stay; b) Characterize the prevalence of malnutrition and nutritional risk in hospitalized patients. Methodology. Systematic Review of original articles using the keywords "Nutrition Assessment", "Length of stay" and "Prognosis", from January 2004 to January 2014 in the databases Bireme/BVS, published in English, Portuguese or Spanish. Results. From a total of 2,181 patients analyzed in the selected studies, about 57% were aged 60 years or more, averaging between 63 and 85 years. The prevalence of malnutrition or nutritional risk of the general population studied ranged from 0.98% to 69.9%, depending on the nutritional assessment tool used in the analysis. Regarding time hospitalization and its association with the degree of malnutrition or nutritional risk, a positive correlation was shown in most series. Conclusion. The high prevalence of malnutrition at admission seems to result in longer hospital patients, increased hospital costs and worse clinical outcomes. Although a model of appropriate nutritional assessment does not exist, its importance is indisputable and further studies are needed to further elucidate the subject.