[Score for nutritional status evaluation: the role played in the prognostic stratification of dilated cardiomyopathy and advanced heart failure patients].
OBJECTIVE
Develop a method for the evaluation of patients nutritional status through a score that expresses universal nutritional status, as well as investigate if that score would be efficient for the prognostic stratification of advanced heart failure (HF) pts.


METHODS
The score was reached by the selection of evaluation methods that would quantify nutritional status: ideal body weight percentage, thickness of tricipital skinfold, percentiles for arm muscular mass circumference, albumin serum level, lymphocyte total count. In order to be validated, the score was applied to a group of 95 pts. Pts were under 65 years old no evidence of consumptive diseases. The score was analyzed to confirm whether it would keep correlation with HF clinical data and whether it would stratify its prognostic.


RESULTS
Nutritional status suggesting moderate or severe malnutrition could be observed in 31/95 (32.6%). No correlation was found between nutritional score values and the duration of symptoms, or the level of ventricular dysfunction. Pts with high nutritional score showed a trend towards higher mortality rate (p=0.0606).


CONCLUSIONS
Those data suggest malnutrition is reported by 1/3 of pts with advanced HF. A score comprising 5 parameters for nutritional status showed good correlation with the clinical, global evaluation of pts with HF. A score over 8 identified pts with higher probability of death as outcome, confirming that pts under higher malnutrition exhibit worse evolution.
Veloso
Luiz Guilherme
LG
Hospital Auxiliar de Cotoxó, Instituto do Coração do Hospital das Clinicas, FMUSP, São Paulo, SP.
Pereira-Barretto
Antonio Carlos
AC
de Oliveira
Mucio Tavares
MT
Munhoz
Robson Tadeu
RT
Morgado
Paulo César
PC
Ramires
José Antonio Franchini
JA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002311:Cardiomyopathy, Dilated / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D009752:Nutritional Status; D011379:Prognosis; D013997:Time Factors; D018487:Ventricular Dysfunction, Left / Q000503:physiopathology