Assessment of Nutritional Status for Intensive Care Patients

Background: Malnutrition is highly prevalent among intensive care unit (ICU) patients and is considered one of the major public health problems associated with a variety of negative clinical outcomes. Therefore, identifying malnourished patients as early as possible on admission to the ICU by applying nutritional assessment will help in developing appropriate nutritional plans to minimize the consequences of malnutrition and may reduce the length of ventilator dependency and ICU- length of stay (LOS). Several nutritional assessment tools are used to identify patients at nutritional risk using various criteria including anthropometric data, history of weight loss, clinical diagnosis, physical examination, and dietary intake. Objective: This study sought to assess the nutritional status of ICU patients who are on enteral feeding by detecting the prevalence of malnutrition risk among them at different hospitals in Holy Makkah. Materials and Methods: This is an observational cross-sectional study that was conducted on 100 ICU patients on enteral feeding. Patients were recruited from ICUs words in the Saudi Ministry of Health’s Hospital connected to Holy Makkah Healthcare Cluster. The Nutritional Screening and Assessment Tool was used to evaluate Patients’ nutritional status. Data analysis were statistically performed using SPSS program version 23. Results: The nutritional assessment of the ICU patients showed that 79% were at high risk of malnutrition, and most of these (78%) had low albumin levels. Moreover, 18% of the patients were underfed based on calorie intake and 37% of them were underfed based on protein intake. Furthermore, there was an association between patients’ risk level for malnutrition and some factors, including gender and feeding type (P = 0.014 and P = 0.012, respectively). Conclusion: The findings indicate a prevalence of malnutrition risk among ICU patients in some Holy Makkah Hospitals was 79%, with underfed calories and protein.