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. 2020 Jun;74(6):876-883.
doi: 10.1038/s41430-020-0659-7. Epub 2020 May 13.

Clinical significance of nutritional risk screening for older adult patients with COVID-19

Gaoli Liu  1 , Shaowen Zhang  1 , Zhangfan Mao  1 , Weixing Wang  2 , Haifeng Hu  1
Affiliations

Clinical significance of nutritional risk screening for older adult patients with COVID-19

Gaoli Liu et al. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2020 Jun.

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the nutritional risks among older patients with COVID-19 and their associated clinical outcomes using four nutritional risk screening (NRS) tools: Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), Mini Nutrition Assessment Shortcut (MNA-sf), and Nutrition Risk Index (NRI).

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the data of patients with COVID-19 older than 65 years who were treated in our hospital from January 28, 2020 to March 5, 2020, and explored the relationship between nutritional risk and clinical outcomes.

Results: A total of 141 patients with COVID-19 (46 common COVID-19, 73 severe COVID-19, and 22 extremely severe COVID-19) were enrolled in the study. NRS 2002 identified 85.8% of patients as having risk, with being identified 41.1% by MUST, 77.3% by MNA-sf, and 71.6% by NRI. The agreement strength was moderate between NRS 2002 and MNA-sf, NRI, fair between MUST and MNA-sf, NRI, fair between MNA-sf and NRI, poor between NRS 2002 and MUST (P < 0.01). After adjustment for confounding factors in multivariate regression analysis, patients in the risk group had significantly longer LOS, higher hospital expenses (except MNA-sf), poor appetite, heavier disease severity, and more weight change(kg) than normal patients by using NRS 2002, MNA-sf, and NRI(P < 0.05).

Conclusions: The NRS 2002, MNA-sf, and NRI are useful and practical tools with respect to screening for patients with COVID-19 who are at nutritional risk, as well as in need of additional nutritional intervention.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Comparison of percentage of risk groups between each tools.
*compared with NRS2002, P < 0.05, #compared with MUST, P < 0.05.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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