Hospital malnutrition: Results from the greek participation in the program nutritionDay worldwide 2011

Aim: Το describe the results of a sub-sample of the Greek hospitals that participated in the “nutritionDay 2011” initiative and to record current practices regarding nutritional screening and dietary treatment of hospitalized patients. Moreover, variables that affect the length of hospital stay were explored.

Material-Methods: Two hundred and thirty patients,from 13 different wards in 5 Greek hospitals were included in the study. During the scheduled “nutritionDay 2011”, all the relevant questionnaires of the project were completed and one month later patients’ clinical outcome was recorded. Data were analysed with PASW Statistics 19.0.

Results: None of the departments included in the program applied nutritional screening as a routine procedure, except from a burn unit. Twelve out of 13 departments reported that they weigh patients only when necessary. The 40.4% of patients reported unintentional weight loss during the last trimester, whereas 42.1% reported dietary intake less than half of usual during the last week before the nutritionDay. On nutritionDay, 13% of the patients did not consume the main meal offered, mainly due to loss of appetite or poor meal quality. Length of hospital stay was associated with surgical operation (β=1.46, P=0.002), cancer presence (β=0.74, P=0.04) and unintentional weight loss during the last trimester (β=1.03, P=0.005), after adjustment for other co-founders.

Conclusions: Nutritional screening is not a routine procedure in the Greek hospitals. Variables such as recent unintentional weight loss should be incorporated into patients’ assessment and follow-up given that they are associated with prolonged length of hospital stay.