Malnutrition in tubefed nursing home patients with pressure sores

This study compares the nutritional status and dietary intake of 14 tubefed nursing home patients with pressure sores (age: 70 +/- 5 years, mean +/- SEM) to 12 tubefed patient-controls without sores (age: 60 +/- 7 years). Patients tended to have higher calorie intake (32 +/- 3 kcal/kg) than patient-controls (26 +/- 2 kcal/kg, p = 0.11). Protein intake was significantly higher in patients (1.4 +/- 0.2 g/kg) than patient-controls (0.9 +/- 0.1 g of protein per kg, p less than 0.05). Despite increased calorie and protein intake, biochemical measures of nutritional status were worse in the patients. Serum albumin was lower in patients (33 +/- 1 g/L) than in patient-controls (37 +/- 1 g/L, p less than 0.05) as was level of hemoglobin (patients: 117 +/- 5; patient-controls: 132 +/- 5 g/L, p less than 0.05). Patients with stage IV (severe) sores had lower serum cholesterol levels (3.46 +/- 0.31 mmol/L, n = 5) than patients with stage II/III (milder) sores (4.58 +/- 0.23 mmol/L, n = 9, p less than 0.05). Plasma zinc was low in both patients (11.2 +/- 0.6 mumol/L) and patient-controls (11.5 +/- 0.7 mumol/L, p = NS). Pressure sore surface area was positively correlated with calorie intake per kilogram of body weight (r = +0.59, p less than 0.04) and negatively correlated with body mass index (r = -0.70, p less than 0.03), hemoglobin (r = -0.55, p less than 0.07) and serum cholesterol (r = -0.57, p less than 0.05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)