title: Nutritional Alert in hospitalized patients.
abstract: The objective of the study is to assess a nutritional risk alert using an Informatics System in hospitalized patients versus the conventional methodology.
  
  
  METHODS
  We studied 400 medical patients at the Belgrano Hospital Critical Care Unit. We considered two groups of 200 patients. In the first the group (Control Group), nutritional risk was diagnosed in a traditional way. In the second group (Alarm Group), nutritional risk was diagnosed with an alert system. The alert was triggered when a patient showed low levels of, at least, two of the following variables: albumin, cholesterol, triglyceride, lymphocyte or low body mass index (BMI).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Nutritional risk was detected in 20.3% of the Control Group patients while, in the Alert Group, nutritional risk was detected in 34.3% of the patients; the difference between the two groups was significant (p<0.001), with a sensitivity rate of 99% and a specificity rate of 98%.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Malnutrition is more easily detected when using an alert system.
authors.affiliation: Health Informatics Department, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina (HIBA).
authors.forename: Humberto Fernán Mandirola
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Brieux
authors.affiliation: HL7 Argentina.
authors.forename: Diego
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kaminker
authors.affiliation: Health Informatics Department, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina (HIBA).
authors.forename: Fernando
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Campos
authors.affiliation: BIOCOM Argentina.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guillen
authors.affiliation: BIOCOM Argentina.
authors.forename: Javier
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Alejandris
authors.affiliation: Health Informatics Department, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina (HIBA).
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Luna
authors.affiliation: Health Informatics Department, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina (HIBA).
authors.forename: Analia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Baum
authors.affiliation: Health Informatics Department, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina (HIBA).
authors.forename: Fernán Gonzalez Bernaldo
authors.initials: FG
authors.lastname: de Quirós
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001118:Argentina; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D006747:Hospital Communication Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006751:Hospital Information Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000379:methods; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity