How is the patient’s nutrition after a stroke?

Neurological conditions usually cause altered levels of consciousness or swallowing mechanisms which make artificial nutritional support necessary. International guidelines recommend nutritional screening to detect malnutrition in patients with neurological diseases. Dysphagia is a common problem after a stroke, however, it is a treatable pathology, and swallowing rehabilitation allows for improving patients’ nutritional status. Awareness of this problem is required among healthcare professionals both for its diagnosis and for the implementation of nutritional intervention measures. Patients should be tested for dysphagia within the first 24 hours of the stroke onset; this swallowing assessment as well as malnutrition screening should never be delayed by more than 72 hours. The present study addresses diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, the indications of the different nutritional treatments available and the transition to oral feeding in patients who have had a stroke episode.