Biomed Pap Med Fac Univ Palacky Olomouc Czech Repub. 2012, 156(4):371-376 | DOI: 10.5507/bp.2011.057

Comparison of three screening tools for nutritional status assessment of the elderly in their homes

Radka Kozakova, Darja Jarosova, Renata Zelenikova
Department of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

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.

Aim: 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 (pMNA = 0.0049; pMUST = -0.537; pSGA = -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.

Keywords: nutrition, home care, elderly over 65 years of age, Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST)

Received: June 9, 2011; Accepted: October 21, 2011; Prepublished online: November 30, 2011; Published: December 12, 2012  Show citation

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Kozakova, R., Jarosova, D., & Zelenikova, R. (2012). Comparison of three screening tools for nutritional status assessment of the elderly in their homes. Biomedical papers, 156(4), 371-376. doi: 10.5507/bp.2011.057
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