How to detect malnutrition in patients effectively?
Malnutrition is an important factor, influencing both morbidity and recovery after surgery. The early detection of nutritional risk would allow early intervention, which may prevent later complications. A traditional nutritional assessment often includes dietary and medical evaluations to identify significant weight loss over time, significantly low or high body weight(BW), skinfold thickness, serum nutritional factor levels and functional measurements of muscle strength. Individually, these measurements often have limited value in accurately determining a patient's nutritional risk. As a result, combinations of diverse measurements have been developed into subjective scoring systems (Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) and Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS-2002)) designed to increase the sensitivity and specificity of nutritional status determinations. Scoring systems have been based on objective measurements of nutritional status, such as oral energy intake, BW, weight loss over time, loss of subcutaneous fat, muscle wasting, serum protein levels, and immune competence...