Study on nutritional risk screening in elderly post-stroke patients

Abstract

Objective: To explore the incidence of nutritional risk in elderly stroke patients and the significance of nutritional screening. Methods: A total of 490 elderly stroke patients admitted to the Rehabilitation Department of Xuhui District Central Hospital in Shanghai from July 2019 to June 2020 were enrolled. All the patients were more than 60 years old， with the duration after stroke less than 6 months. Nutrition risk assessment was conducted in the patients within 24 hours after admission using the Nutrition Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002) assessment form，and incidence of nutrition risk was investigated. The patients were divided into nutrition risk group and normal group. Barthel index was used to assess the activities of daily living(ADL) of patients within 24 hours before discharge, and correlation of the nutritional risk, hemoglobin, albumin, prealbumin, creatinine levels with ADL at discharge were analyzed. At the same time, the difference in ADL between the nutrition risk group and the normal group at discharge as compared. Results: The incidence of nutritional risk in 490 elderly stroke patients was 69.18%. The nutritional risk score, prealbumin and creatinine levels of the patients were significantly negatively correlated with ADL at discharge. Even given symptomatic treatment in the hospital, patients in the nutrition risk group had a lower ADL than those of the normal group at discharge(P<0.05). Conclusions: Among the elderly stroke patients, the incidence of nutritional risk is as high as 69.18%. Patients with higher nutritional risk scores in hospital rehabilitation may have lower ADL scores at discharge, indicating that more active measures should be taken to deal with elderly patients having nutritional risk at admission.

Keywords

• |post-stroke|nutritional risk|activities of daily living