Nutritional Parameters in Homebound Persons of Greatly Advanced Age

Abstract

There exists a deficiency of accurate information regarding standard nutritional parameters in people of greatly advanced age. In order to begin obtaining appropriate data, we assessed nutritional status in 45 elderly homebound individuals with a mean age of 84 yr, using anthropometric methods, skin testing, and blood analysis. We compared our data with those from the HANES survey, a reasonable approach to the testing of new possible standards for nutritional assessment. Our results suggest that standard measures in common use are inappropriate for people of greatly advanced age.

Protein‐Calorie Undernutrition in the Nursing Home

“…The minimum daily requirement for energy falls, 39 while that for protein remains constant or increases 40 . While some observers propose that optimal values for nutritional intakes and indicators are not identical in the young and in the old, 42–49 there is not enough information today to define these ranges in the various subgroups of the geriatric population. Consequently, the surveys of elderly nutrition which are reviewed here generally relied on “normal ranges” that were developed in healthy populations of young or middle‐aged adults.…”

Nutrition, Cancer, and Aging: An Annotated Review

“…This limitation is reflected in the discrepancies in findings of nutritional indexes in the elderly reported by different authors 71–77 . In general, aging is accompanied by a decline in muscular arm circumference, 71–76 serum protein concentration, 73,74 and creatinine height index 77 . The wide range of variations of nutritional indexes in healthy elderly makes the use of these parameters unsuitable to diagnose malnutrition in the aged population.…”