Copyright (c) 2024 Revista médico científica
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Introduction: Hospitalized patients show high prevalence of undernourishment like overweight, in spite of the scientiic and technological advances. The objective of the survey is to describe nutritional status of hospitalized patients on the Department of Surgery at the Complejo Hospitalario of the Social Security Bureau.
Materials and methods: Transversally descriptive survey that evaluated patients hospitalized on the Department of Surgery during the study period. The minimum sample size was calculated, with an outcome of 164. A convenience sampling took place. Anthropometric measures and laboratory data were recollected by the authors when patients were admitted to surgery service. A data base was elaborated and analyzed on Epi-Info 3.2.2. The objective of the study was explained to the patients and results of it were promised to be handled in extreme conidentiality.
Results: The study included 165 patients, 64 % of which were female, average age was 56.2 years old. Admission diagnoses were colelitiasis with 31 %, inguinal hernias with 13 % and thyroid pathology with 12 % of incidence. Once the anthropometric measures were analyzed, the average Body Mass index was 27.6. Regarding laboratory measures, 15 % of the patients had hemoglobin < 12 mg/dL and 38 % had linfocitary rate < 2000/mm3. The 96 % of the patients had normal levels of albumin. Once the nutritional condition of the patients was evaluated, 35.8 % were overweight, 32.7 % were normal and 28.5 % had some level of obesity.
Conclusions: Malnutrition is a condition frequently found in the hospital which tends to get unnoticed, prove of it was that 66 % of the patients had this condition, most of which were over weighted followed by obesity
