Assessing the nutritional status of hospitalized elderly

PURPOSE: The increasing number of elderly people worldwide throughout the years is concerning due to the health problems often faced by this population. This review aims to summarize the nutritional status among hospitalized elderly and the role of the nutritional assessment tools in this issue. METHODS: A literature search was performed on six databases using the terms “malnutrition”, “hospitalised elderly”, “nutritional assessment”, “Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA)”, “Geriatric Nutrition Risk Index (GNRI)”, and “Subjective Global Assessment (SGA)”. RESULTS: According to the previous studies, the prevalence of malnutrition among hospitalized elderly shows an increasing trend not only locally but also across the world. Under-recognition of malnutrition causes the number of malnourished hospitalized elderly to remain high throughout the years. Thus, the development of nutritional screening and assessment tools has been widely studied, and these tools are readily available nowadays. SGA, MNA, and GNRI are the nutritional assessment tools developed specifically for the elderly and are well validated in most countries. However, to date, there is no single tool that can be considered as the universal gold standard for the diagnosis of nutritional status in hospitalized patients. CONCLUSION: It is important to identify which nutritional assessment tool is suitable to be used in this group to ensure that a structured assessment and documentation of nutritional status can be established. An early and accurate identification of the appropriate treatment of malnutrition can be done as soon as possible, and thus, the malnutrition rate among this group can be minimized in the future.