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The Hidden Threat of Malnutrition
Good nutrition is fundamental to good health. Inadequate nutrient intake or depleted reserves of energy, protein, and other nutrients create the risk of malnutrition. In the healthcare setting, malnutrition has wide-ranging effects that are serious and costly.
Nutrition Matters
Research consistently shows that malnutrition—a state of inadequate or unbalanced nutrition—is a hidden cause of poor health outcomes and rising health care costs around the world. Poor nutrition and malnutrition take a toll on human health and well being.
Hidden Costs Hurt
Health care decision makers today are challenged to provide effective care, yet control the cost of delivering such care. Health care providers are concerned with expenses and complication rates. While strategies to limit the cost of medications are widely discussed as ways to save money, the human and financial costs that result from malnutrition are all too often overlooked.
Nutrition Matters During Illness
Nutrition is particularly critical during periods of rapid tissue growth (e.g., in post-surgical healing) and during illness. Nutrition is essential to immune function. Nutritional interventions can restore normal nutritional status and improve outcomes such as:
- reduction in infection and complications
- improvement of wound healing
- reduction of mortality.
Nutrition and Surgery
Malnutrition can cause measurable adverse effects on the body’s form and function and on clinical outcomes. Good nutrition is essential during periods of rapid tissue growth like that which occurs following surgical procedures. A healthy nutritional status is also critical for pre-surgical patients before hospitalization.
Nutrition Matters for All Ages
While people of all ages can experience nutritional deficits, older adults are at particular risk. The challenges of losing lean body mass as you age combined with loss of appetite, swallowing difficulties, and other conditions makes nutrition in the elderly a vital part of treatment.
3 Major Findings About Malnutrition
- Malnutrition and risk for malnutrition are still highly prevalent in some patient populations.
- Malnutrition is still associated with increased morbidity and mortality, decreased quality of life, longer length of (hospital) stay, and increased health care costs.
- The economic and human costs of malnutrition are avoidable.