Assessment of Malnutrition in Rehabilitation Inpatients

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The purposes of this study are to determine the prevalence of malnutrtion and its trend of change and to establish its relationship with dysphagia and functional outcome in rehabilitation patients. METHOD: We included 39 patients who were admitted into rehabilitation ward, and we evaluated nutri- tional parameters(serum albumin, serum lymphocyte, and weight loss) and dysphagia at the time of admi- ssion and four weeks after admission. We analyzed total rehabilitation inpatients and stroke patients who were major inpatients of rehabilitation ward. We measured Functional Independence Measure(FIM) and length of stay as clinical outcome scales. RESULTS: Malnutrition was observed in 76.9% of total patients and 69.6% in stroke patients at the time of admission. After four weeks, malnutrition was observed in 65.4% and 66.7%, respectively. Prevalence of dysphagia was 25.0% in non-malnourished patients and 22.0% in malnourished patients at the time of admission. It was not changed significantly after four weeks of rehabilitation. The length of stay was 31.3+/-16.0 days in non-malnourished patients and 39.8+/-19.4 days in malnourished patients. The FIM effi- ciency was 1.0+/-0.6 in non-malnourished patients and 2.3+/-6.5 in malnourished patients. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that malnutrition was highly prevalent in rehabilitation inpatients and it did not improved significantly through four weeks of rehabilitation. Therefore, it is important to be concerned about malnutrition and it needs proper and active management.