Determination of malnutrition status in palliative care patients

Abstract

Aim: The study was carried out in the descriptive form in order to determine the malnutrition status in palliative care patients. Material and Method: The research was conducted in the palliative care unit of a hospital in the east of Turkey between May 2019 and December 2019. Since the entire population was aimed to be included in the research, 123 palliative care patients were reached without calculating the sample size and using any sampling method. In order to evaluate the nutritional status of the patients, patient introductory information form and Mini Nutritional Assessment Test (MNA) were used. In the evaluation of the data, descriptive statistics, Kruskal-Wallis Test, Chi-Square and Mann-Whitney U test were used. All the findings were evaluated at p<0.05 significance level. Results: The mean age of the patients was 71.88±14.16, and 51.2% of them were male, 95.9% were married, 39.8% had cancer and 45.5% were nourished orally. There was a risk of malnutrition in 89.4% of the patients and malnutrition development risk in 7.3%. The presence of malnutrition was found to be higher in cancer patients compared with Alzheimer’s patients, and in those nourished via percutaneous endoscopic gastronomy, nasogastric catheter and total parenteral nutrition compared to the ones nourished orally (p<0.05).Conclusion: The results obtained from this study showed that it is very important, in palliative care patients with a high risk of malnutrition development, to follow the nutritional status closely and to arrange nutritional supportive treatment early so that the patients can go through a good process in the last days of their lives.