Comparison of three screening tools for nutritional status assessment of the elderly in their homes.
BACKGROUND
The prevailing recommendation for the elderly is to live in their own homes as long as conditions allow. With this emphasis on the natural living environment, it is imperative to closely monitor both the general health and nutritional needs of the elderly in community settings.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of the study was to compare three nutritional status screening and evaluation tools of the elderly in their homes.


METHODS
Testing of measuring instruments, MNA, SGA, and MUST took place in the homes of 120 seniors in selected areas of the Czech and Slovak Republics. The study included 120 seniors. For testing of the relationships and dependencies, Pearson's correlation coefficient, t and Fisher tests were used. The level of statistical significance was α = 0.05.


RESULTS
All tests were to a large degree correlated (p(MNA) = 0.0049; p(MUST) = -0.537; p(SGA) = -0.578) with the body mass index of the seniors. Simultaneously, it was confirmed that the tools for assessing nutritional status in the study showed significant differences regarding the classification of patients at risk of malnutrition and/or malnourished patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Based on the findings, we conclude that MNA appeared to be a more appropriate tool for nutritional assessment of the elderly living in their homes. SGA and MUST provided rather subjective evaluation of the nutritional status and did not furnish an in-depth categorization of malnutrition.
Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. renata.zelenikova@osu.cz
Radka
R
Kozakova
Darja
D
Jarosova
Renata
R
Zelenikova
D000368:Aged; D018153:Czech Republic; D005260:Female; D006699:Home Care Services; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D009752:Nutritional Status; D018154:Slovakia