Comparing Assessment Tools as Candidates for Personalized Nutritional Evaluation of Senior Citizens in a Nursing Home

Abstract

Nutrition is an important health issue for seniors. In nursing homes, simple, inexpensive, fast, and validated tools to assess nutritional risk/status are indispensable. A multisurvey cross-sectional study with a convenient sample was created, comparing five nutritional screening/assessment tools and the time required for each, in order to identify the most useful instrument for a nursing home setting. Nutrition risk/status was evaluated using the following tools: Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), Mini Nutritional Assessment Short Form (MNA-SF), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002), and calf girth (CG). The time spent completing each tool was recorded. Eighty-three subjects were included. MNA-SF and CG were the screening tools that ranked highest with regards to malnutrition identification. CG failed to identify nutritional risk/malnutrition in seniors with lower limb edema. CG was the fastest tool while SGA was the slowest. This was the first study comparing non-invasive nutritional tools with time expended as a consideration in the implementation. CG is responsive, fast, and reliable in elders without edema. MNA-SF was more efficient at detecting malnutrition cases in the elderly population. Both MNA-SF and CG are considered the most suitable for the nursing home setting.

Assessing nutritional status in older adults requiring long‐term care: Interchangeability of bioelectrical impedance analysis and manual methods for upper arm anthropometric measurements

“…The Mini Nutritional Assessment‐Short Form is the most widely utilized and recommended tool for malnutrition assessment in older adults 7 . However, because the Mini Nutritional Assessment‐Short Form includes items measuring cognitive function and mobility, it is difficult to observe the nutritional status of requiring long‐term care who have low mobility and cognitive function at baseline.…”

“…6 The Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form is the most widely utilized and recommended tool for malnutrition assessment in older adults. 7 However, because the Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form includes items measuring cognitive function and mobility, it is difficult to observe the nutritional status of requiring long-term care who have low mobility and cognitive function at baseline. Additionally, serum albumin and prealbumin, which are objective measures of nutritional assessment, are not useful as surrogate indicators of total body protein and total muscle mass, as decreased levels might occur due to inflammation from chronic diseases.…”