Nutritional Care in a Nursing Home in Italy

Abstract

IntroductionMalnutrition is a clinical condition due to the imbalance among needs, intake and use of nutrients, leading to the increase of morbidity and mortality, and to the impairment of quality of life. Even in industrialized countries undernutrition is becoming an alarming phenomenon, especially involving elderly institutionalized subjects.A multicentric study called PIMAI (Project Iatrogenic MAlnutrition in Italy), was carried out in Italy over 2005. The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of malnutrition in hospitals and in nursing care homes (NH), to assess the level of nutritional attention and to measure the perceived quality in food and nutritional care.This paper represents a preliminary analysis of data collected in a NH included in the PIMAI project.Materials and methodsA total of 100 subjects (29 males and 71 females, aged 80.2±10 years), were recruited from January to June 2005 at the Clinical Rehabilitation Institute “Villa delle Querce” in Nemi (Rome), among patients in the NH facility. All the participants underwent a multidimensional geriatric evaluation (considering nutritional, clinical, functional and cognitive parameters), and a survey on “perceived quality” of nutritional care.Results and discussionAccording to nutritional status defined by the Mini Nutritional Assessment®, data analysis showed a high prevalence of malnutrition (36%) especially related to advanced age, chewing, cognitive and functional impairments. Patients seemed to consider nutrition to be important for their health; on the other hand, they were not thoroughly satisfied with the quality of food. Particularly, it was observed scarce attention to nutritional status from medical and nursing staff.ConclusionsOur study confirms the need to pay greater attention to nutritional status in elderly institutionalized subjects. Medical and nursing teams need to be aware of the importance to perform an evaluation of nutritional status in these subset of subjects.

Disability and Its Influence in Nutritional Assessment Tools in Elderly People Living in Nursing Homes

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Relationship between cognitive impairment and nutritional assessment on functional status in Calabrian long-term-care

“…This disorder does not appear to be associated with increased comorbidity and/or use of drugs. Previous studies have shown an inverse correlation between cognitive impairment and comorbidity in a large sample of patients admitted to nursing homes:34,35 it was found that the prevalence of defined cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension, decreased in relation to increased dementia severity,36 although other authors disagree: the comorbidity is inversely correlated with the degree of cognitive impairment 37. Moreover, some studies have shown a relationship between nutritional state and comorbidities 38.…”

Cognition and Social–Physiological Factors Associated With Malnutrition in Hospitalized Older Adults in Taiwan

“…Elderly individuals with dementia frequently have difficulty feeding themselves and may not understand the importance of maintaining good nutritional status (Cole, 2012). The nutritional status of geriatric populations is an issue that deserves greater attention from healthcare providers and caregivers (Donini, Neri, De Chiara, Poggiogalle, & Muscaritoli, 2013;Saka, Kaya, Ozturk, Erten, & Karan, 2012).…”