RESUMO
OBJECTIVE: To explore incidence and prevalence rates of nutritional deficiency in adults in general practice. METHODS: Six Dutch general practice research and registration networks supplied incidence and prevalence rates of nutritional deficiency by the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) or 'E-list' labels ('loss of appetite, feeding problem adult, iron, pernicious/folate deficiency anaemia, vitamin deficiencies and other nutritional disorders, weight loss'). In case of disease-related nutritional deficiency, we asked whether this was labelled separately ('co-registered') or included in the registration of the underlying disease. RESULTS: 'Iron deficiency anaemia' had highest incidence (0.3-8.5/1000 person years), and prevalence rates (2.8-8.9/1000 person years). Nutritional deficiency was mostly documented in the elderly. In two networks 'co-registration' was additional, two only documented the underlying disease and two did not specify 'co-registration'. No clear difference was found between networks considering the difference in 'co-registration'. CONCLUSION: Nutritional deficiency is little documented in general practice, and generally is not registered separately from the underlying disease.
Assuntos
Distúrbios Nutricionais/epidemiologia , Atenção Primária à Saúde , Adolescente , Adulto , Fatores Etários , Idoso , Anemia Ferropriva/epidemiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Incidência , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Países Baixos/epidemiologia , Distúrbios Nutricionais/etiologia , Prevalência , Sistema de RegistrosRESUMO
OBJECTIVE: Nutritional deficiency is an independent risk factor for mortality. Despite its clinical relevance, the prevalence in a primary care setting is poorly documented. We performed a systematic review of reported prevalence and clinical assessment of nutritional deficiency in general practice. METHODS: From MEDLINE, Current Contents and EMBASE, we derived articles and checked the initially included ones for references on prevalence data. Of the eligible articles, we assessed the quality of research and results. RESULTS: We finally included eight studies. The prevalence ranged from 0 to 13%. However, the study populations were heterogeneous and all studies contained methodological flaws, especially selection bias. In addition, the clinical assessment differed between studies. CONCLUSION: Literature on the prevalence of nutritional deficiency within general practice is rare and provides disputable prevalence assessments.
