Riesgo nutricional y estancia en pacientes de la Unidad de Cuidados Intensivos de un hospital nacional, Lima - 2023

Introduction: The critically ill patient is one who is physiologically unstable and under life-threatening. The background of studies in our country and in Latin America evidence a high nutritional risk in inpatients. On the other hand, the hospital stay allows us to know hospital efficiency; a prolonged stay generates increased costs, poor accessibility to hospitalization services, saturation of emergencies and risks of adverse events. Objective: To evaluate the relationship between nutritional risk and length of stay in patients in the Intensive Care Unit of a National Hospital in Lima, 2023. Material and methods: Non-experimental cross - sectional and correlational- causal study. The population was made up of patients from the critical area of ​​a National Hospital in Lima, Peru during the period 2023, and who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. A sample of 100 medical records was obtained. Nutritional risk was determined using the NUTRIC score tool and the sum of the total score obtained, categorized into low risk 0-5 points and high risk 6 – 10 points. The ICU stay was calculated by the length of stay, in days, within the service and was classified as short hospital stay of less than 10 days and long hospital stay greater than or equal to 10 days of stay. The data were analyzed using the Kendall Tau inferential statistic. Results: It was found that 61% of the studied population had a low nutritional risk and 39% had a high risk. 53% of the patients had a short stay and a median of 12 days in the ICU, also it was found a low association (Coef. 0.192), but significative between the variables nutritional risk and stay in ICU. Conclusions: In the present study, a relationship was found between the nutritional risk variables and hospital stay in ICU patients.