[Nutritional assessment of the critical ill patient]

Nutritional state of patients affects them in their clinical evolution. Protein-caloric malnutrition contributes to the increase of morbidity and mortality in critical care. Regardless all the parameters available to assessment, there is no standard in hospital centers. In this review, we were looking for a method to nutrition assessment (NA) in critical patient that allow more adequate assessment and contribute to improvement in critical care.

In order to compare methods in NA in critical patient, search was performed in scientific papers aboutthis area. The keywords usedwere nutritional assessment, critical patient, critical care, hospital undernourishment and anthropometry.

There are restrictions to different anthropometric parameters for NA when referring to critical patients. There is no consensus within authors about the best method for these patients and they no advise to choose only one parameter. We suggest for practice clinical in NA, one tool that include objective and subjective aspects in critical patients and identify those that are either undernourishments or in nutritional risks (Appendix 1).