The Nutritionist's Educational Intervention on the Protein Intake in Hospitalized Elderly People

Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein

Status: Completed

Conditions: Protein Malnutrition; Old Age; Cachexia; Dietary Habits; Patient Participation; Sarcopenia

Treatments: Other: educational intervention

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05502445

VFigueira

Details and patient eligibility

About

The food intake is often compromised in the elderly, and during hospitalization, dietary restrictions may be imposed, making them more susceptible to the risk of malnutrition and sarcopenia. It is essential to make an early identification of the elderly with low intake and involve them in their self-care. The aims will be assess the influence of the nutritionist's educational action to increase protein intake in elderly patients, to analyze the knowledge on its importance in the prevention of sarcopenia and to identify the prevalence of nutritional risk. This is a field, prospective, correlational, comparative and randomized study. The elderly patients will be randomized into a Control Group and Intervention Group.

Full description

The Control Group will follow the flow of nutritional assessment and monitoring while the Intervention Group will receive daily visits to monitor food intake, leaflet and educational video on the importance of protein and its source foods. In both groups, a questionnaire on knowledge of protein sources and its importance will be applied, and we will calculated the 24-hour recall of a regular day and for three days of hospitalization. Patients will be assessment by Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form and SARC-F and will be the measurements of calf circumference and hand grip strength.

Enrollment: 58 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 60+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• elderly patients aged 60 years or older,
• with a prescription of oral feeding, exclusively,
• minimum period of three days.

Exclusion criteria

• palliative care,
• treatment for chronic renal failure,
• patients with neurological deficit and dysphagia,
• readmissions during the study,
• receiving enteral and/or parenteral nutritional therapy,
• patients in isolation.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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58 participants in 2 patient groups

Control Group

No Intervention group

Description:

This group will follow the hospital's standard nutritional assessment and monitoring flow: * 24-hour recall: patients will be interviewed to report about one day of their usual diet. * Application of a questionnaire: to assess the knowledge about the importance of protein intake in the prevention of sarcopenia and functionality, and whether the participant regularly performs physical activity. * Energy and protein needs: estimated according to the clinical status and patient associated pathologies. The protocol of the Clinical Nutrition Service will be followed. * Calculation of the Body Mass Index (BMI) * Nutritional risk was determined using the Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form * Screening for sarcopenia: SARC-F ,Calf Circumference and Hand Grip Strength

Intervention Group

Active Comparator group

Description:

In this group, the steps below are added: * On the first day, the delivery of the leaflet on the importance of nutrition in the hospital environment will be added in addition to verbal guidance. * On the second day, an educational institutional video with duration of two minutes, will be shown with the title "Food Intake and Oral Supplement in Nutritional Rehabilitation" via tablet or mobile phone. * When the 24-hour recall will be collected, an assessment of food intake will be performed, mainly of foods that are sources of protein and, when they were less than 75%, strategies must be designed to increase the acceptance or indication of oral nutritional supplements (ONS).

Treatment:

Other: educational intervention