[Conventional nutritional support (CNS) in hospitalized surgical patients]

To compare nutritional status assessment methods on hospital admission and discharge in surgical patients receiving conventional nutritional support (CNS).

One hundred eighty-three patients hospitalized in the surgical ward of the Hospital of PUC-Campinas and aging from 30 to 60 years were assessed; of these, 54.6% were females and 45.4% were males. A nutritional support protocol was used to collect the data with identification and diagnosis data obtained from medical records, antecedents, anthropometry, eating history during hospitalization, total energy intake in the usual diet (UD), energy requirement (ER) and nutritional status. The Wilcoxon test was used for the statistical analysis and the Kappa (k) Coefficient was used to verify the agreement between the nutritional status on hospital admission and discharge. The adopted significance level was 5% (0.05).

The analysis of the values on hospital admission and discharge showed that the nutritional status remained constant on admission and discharge when analyzed by groups of diseases. The relationship between nutritional status on hospital admission and discharge in patients with benign biliary tract diseases and vascular diseases presented an excellent agreement between the two moments (k = 1000). It was verified that, discounting the effect of randomness, the nutritional status on admission and discharge agreed in 71.43% and 50% respectively in these two clinical conditions regarding the nutritional diagnosis of being well nourished. In benign diseases of the digestive tract and neoplasias, a good agreement was also observed (k = 0,887 and k = 0,820 respectively). In the total sample, the agreement analysis was high (k = 0,918) showing that the nutritional status remained constant during hospitalization.

These findings may be attributed to the routine monitoring of nutritional status which allowed an adequate support during hospitalization even when the energy requirement and intake differed.