Nutritional Assessment in Elderly Homes in Cairo

Abstract

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION E lderly are considered to be at high risk of malnutrition. Apart from its relevance for morbidity and mortality, malnutrition is associated with worsening functionality and quality of life. Several investigations regarding nutritional status in nursing homes have demonstrated that malnutrition is a serious problem in nursing homes, demanding special attention.Nutritional inadequacy in the elderly can be the result of one or more factors, physiological, pathological, socio-economic, and psychological factors. Malnutrition, low body mass index (BMI) and unintentional weight loss are risk factors for mortality and have a negative influence on the functional status and psychosocial well-being of the elderly population. Nutrition care process including targeted history, Screening tools, calculation of anthropometric measures, physical examination, and laboratory investigation will provide the physician with a valuable database about the resident’s nutritional status to detect risk factors of malnutrition and begin intervention as early as possible. Old age, multiple co-morbidities, polypharmacy, stroke, impaired cognition, depression, functional dependence have to be considered as significant risk factors for malnutrition in elderly homes’ male residents in Cairo. A lot of feeding problems are present and can be related to malnutrition in elderly homes’ male residents; such as low food intake, dental problems, swallowing problems, and uncalculated blendarized food for nasogastric tube feeding. Dietary habits shown to some degree to be effective in decreasing risk of malnutrition in elderly home’s residents, including food characteristics as Between-meals snacks, External food, vitamins and Herbs intake. Elderly home play an important role in achieving better nutritional status among the residents through many actions such as, providing comfortable environment for them, encouraging eating in dining room, putting refrigerators inside residents’ rooms, and ensuring food varieties per week. Higher nursing staffing levels were associated with decreased likelihood of malnutrition. Anthropometric measures was an effective tool to assess nutritional status of elderly homes’ residents, and this current study gave a good idea about effectiveness of these anthropometric measures in screening and diagnosing malnutrition in elderly homes’ residents in Cairo. It can be concluded that (BMI ≤19.5 , TSF≤10.5 , MAC ≤24.5 , MAMC ≤22.5) had high diagnostic performance in detecting malnouritrition in Egyptian elderly homes’ residents. Elderly homes care professionals may use this study to inform quality improvement efforts to targeting individuals at high risk for poor nutrition in their facilities.