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Evidence-based management of nutritional deficiency

Content and purpose of this website

Clinicalnutrition.science is an independent website with the aim of providing support to healthcare professionals in the nutritional management in clinical practice:

NutriScreen: Recognised/validated and widely used screening tools to identify patients with manifest malnutrition or at increased risk of malnutrition.
NutriCalc: Calculation of protein and energy requirements using established formulas
NutriGo: Application-oriented practical recommendations for nutrition therapy in different clinical situations based on current guidelines
NutriRisk: Educational presentation for patients on the causes and consequences of malnutrition and the possibility to calculate the individual risk reduction using nutritional therapy.
NutriPro: Comprehensive product database
NutriBib: Reference work for leading, current and selected literature in the field of clinical nutrition

Malnutrition

In Switzerland, 20-30% of hospitalised medical patients have manifest malnutrition or an increased risk of energy and protein malnutrition as assessed by the Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS 2002) score ^{1, 2}. Compared to non-malnourished patients, malnourished patients show an increased rate of complications, a longer duration of hospital stay, a poorer quality of life, a loss of body function and an increased mortality ³. Malnutrition is often disease-associated, but can be specifically treated.

Goals of malnutrition management

The focus lies on early identification of patients at risk of malnutrition, in-depth assessment and immediate initiation of adequate individual (nutritional) therapy to improve and maintain functionality and quality of life, and to reduce complications and mortality. Nutritional management is a multi-professional team effort and should be carried out in cooperation between nursing, dieticians, doctors and other therapists.

An evidence-based treatment algorithm for malnutrition management can be found here:

Nutritional algorithm

References

Kondrup J, et al. Nutritional risk screening (NRS 2002): a new method based on an analysis of controlled clinical trials. Clin Nutr. 2003;22(3):321-36.
Imoberdorf R, et al. Prevalence of undernutrition on admission to Swiss hospitals. Clin Nutr 2010; 29: 38–41.
Felder S, et al. Association of nutritional risk and adverse medical outcomes across different medical inpatient populations. Nutrition 2015; 31: 1385–93.

List of abbreviations

NRS	Nutritional risk screening