Most Older Emergency Department Patients are Malnourished

Researchers have found that most of the emergency department patients, aged 65 years or older, were either malnourished or at a high risk of malnutrition.

The new study, led by researchers at the University of North Carolina Health Care, found that more than half of the older emergency department patients - seen during an 8-week period - were either malnourished or faced a high risk of malnutrition. These malnourished patients had not been diagnosed earlier.

One of the common problems among older adults is malnutrition. The researchers were surprised to see that those who were malnourished were not informed about their health status. This study was led by senior author Timothy F. Platts-Mills.

"Our findings suggest that identifying malnutrition among older emergency department patients and connecting these patients with a food program or other services may be an inexpensive way to help these patients," Platts-Mills said. "Older adults make more than 20 million visits to U.S. emergency departments each year. Our results add to a growing body of evidence that more needs to be done to develop the capacity of emergency departments to address the underlying conditions that impact health for older adults, particularly for those with limited resources."

The researchers based their finding on evaluating 138 adults aged 65 years and older. These patients had received treatment at the emergency department during the 8-week period. None of the patients had any cognitive impairment. None of them were critically ill and were not admitted to a nursing home.

Using the Mini Nutritional Assessment Short-Form (MNA-SF), the researchers assessed the patient's nutritional status. The form is a 6-item tool that included the patient's body mass index and answers that were provided regarding weight loss, drop in intake of food, recent stress or disease, mobility and neuropsychological disorder. The results had score from 0-14.

Score of 7-0 is defined as malnutrition and score 8-11 is defined as at risk of malnutrition. On analyzing the data, the researchers noticed that nearly 16 percent of the patients were malnourished and 77 percent of them were not diagnosed as malnourished earlier. Nearly 60 percent of the patients were found to be either malnourished or at the risk of malnutrition.

However, the researchers found no striking difference in the prevalence of malnutrition between men and women, across levels of education or between those residing in urban versus rural areas.

Those who reported having depressive symptoms, difficulty in eating or buying grocers had a much higher prevalence of malnutrition.

The finding was documented in Journal Annals of Emergency Medicine.