The Importance of Nutrition in Neurological Disorders and Nutrition Assessment Methods

Neurological disorders can change patients' nutritional status by directly or indirectly affecting dietary intake through mechanisms such as dysphagia, movement disorders, cognitive impairment, and depression. Malnutrition contributes to complications, resulting in delayed rehabilitation and increased morbidity and mortality. It is important to prevent malnutrition in patients with neurological disorders and to improve their nutritional status by identifying nutritional deterioration at an early stage and implementing appropriate nutritional interventions. This review examines the nutritional screening and assessment process in patients with neurological disorders, with a particular focus on stroke patients undergoing rehabilitation. Nutritional assessment, the first step of clinical nutrition management, identifies nutritional problems and their causes, signs, and symptoms through an overall evaluation including anthropometric measurements, dietary assessments, biochemical assessment, nutrition-related physical examinations, and functional assessment data. Based on the assessment, a nutritional intervention plan is established. By synthesizing the assessment results of selected subjective and objective indicators, nutritional screening tools to screen patients at risk of malnutrition and nutritional assessment tools to diagnose malnutrition were developed. It is important to use those tools with a clear understanding of their characteristics and scope.