Assessment of dysphagia in institutionalized older adults and its relationship with nutritional status

Abstract

The aging of the Spanish population, with a life expectancy of eighty-five years for women and eighty years for men, has caused many of these people to develop geriatric syndromes that prevent them from living in a totally independent way, either due to a physical limitation of mobility or functional limitations. Dysphagia is the symptom referring to the difficulty or discomfort that occurs during the passage of the food bolus from the mouth to the stomach. Method: The type of study proposed in this work is a cross-sectional observational study. This study has been carried out in a nursing home located in the town of Huéscar, in the province of Granada. There are currently 90 people who reside in the aforementioned residence and to whom the following inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. Results: The population that meets the inclusion criteria of the study is 31 patients, of which 65% are women and 35% are men, with a mean age of 85.3 years. The sarcopenia test will be performed on the subjects after completing the EAT-10 in the admission consultations and in the successive reviews. Discussion: Prevention, our best weapon. In view of the results obtained, we can affirm that dysphagia is an important health problem in geriatric patients, following the trend of previous studies. In order to quantify the power of prevention in the appearance of dysphagia and its consequences, it is necessary to carry out long-term studies where a case population and a control population are compared and disease results are obtained whether these habits are followed or not. Conclusions: Dysphagia can cause important problems in the nutritional status of patients and the consequences that this entails. This is seen with greater intensity in patients with a high degree of dependence. In our study, obvious worse nutritional states and worse quality of life indices are observed in those patients with associated dysphagia. The use of easily applied tests in institutionalized populations makes it possible to reveal the presence of dysphagia, as well as the risk of malnutrition and sarcopenia. Its implementation in nursing homes is necessary, as a first step to carry out an in-depth study of the nutritional status of the residents.