Assessment of adult nutritional status: Case of denutrition

Abstract

The assessment of the nutritional status is based on data including elements of the interrogation (food consumption, and evaluation of ingesta), clinical data based on the results of anthropometric, and body composition measurements, of biological mar-kers and/or multifactorial indexes. More complex assessment methods can be utilized. Undernutrition screening is based on elucidating relevant risk factors, and estimating food intake; however, undernutrition diagnosis is based on the measurement of nutri-tional markers. Food surveys allow to assess the intakes of an individual, or a group of individuals. Some of them estimate the consumption on specific days, others evaluate the usual consumption. The nutritional status assessment is carried out throughout clini-cal tools, common biological parameters, and validated composite indices, in addition to the evaluation of the overall food intake. More or less sophisticated tools (biophysical measurements), associating biological markers, such as: albumin, transthyretin, transferrin, retinol vector protein, etc., combined with clinical or anthropometric para-meters (body mass index (BMI), skin folds, circumference measurements, etc.), have been suggested attempting to ameliorate the nutritional status assessment, and to identify potentially undernourished subjects. Nutritional diagnosis is established further collecting clinical, and biological parameters, and validated composite indices. There-fore, this diagnosis remains the essential initial step to undertake prior any nutritional care, conditioning both therapy, and subsequent prognosis of nutritional pathology. However, it cannot be achieved by a single tool because none has enough sensitivity and specificity allowing the diagnosis of the type and severity of undernutrition.