Association between malnutrition risk and pain in older hospital patients

OBJECTIVE: To describe the prevalence of malnutrition risk and pain in older hospital patients and characterise the association between these two problems. RESEARCH METHODS AND PROCEDURES: The study includes a secondary data analysis of data collected in two cross‐sectional studies. Data collection was performed in 2017 and 2018 using a standardised and tested questionnaire. The study protocol was approved by an ethical committee. RESULTS: Data from 3406 patients were analysed. Among the participants, 24.6% of the patients were at risk of malnutrition, and 59.6% of the patients reported feeling pain. A significantly higher number of patients with pain (26.4%) were at risk of malnutrition than patients without pain (22.1%). The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that patients with severe/very severe or unbearable pain were 1.439 times more likely to develop a risk of malnutrition than patients without pain. Patients with cancer or diseases of the digestive system were twice as likely to develop malnutrition than those without these diseases. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study show that older patients with severe pain are at higher risk of developing a risk of malnutrition than those without pain, although the study design (cross‐sectional) does not imply causality. Therefore, special efforts should be made to assess pain in these patients to reduce the negative consequences of this pain, such as malnutrition.