Full Mini Nutritional Assessment and Prognosis in Elderly Patients with Pulmonary Tuberculosis

Abstract

Objective: Malnutrition is observed frequently in elderly patients with pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Full Mini Nutritional Assessment (full MNA) is a useful method of measuring nutrition status for elderly person. The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between full MNA and the mortality of elderly patients with pulmonary TB. Methods: We evaluated 53 elderly patients with pulmonary TB. The nutrition risk assessment was carried out using full MNA. Results: A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was generated for further analysis of the prognostic value of full MNA score. The area under the curve was 0.856 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.751–0.961). We used the maximum Youden index to obtain optimal cutoff values for full MNA score for prognostic assessment in elderly patients with pulmonary TB. For predicting the risk of mortality, the optimal cutoff value for full MNA score was 13.75. Based on this cutoff value, the Cox proportional hazard model was applied to assess the ability of full MNA score < 14 to predict the prognosis of elderly patients with pulmonary TB. Multivariate analysis identified age (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.114, 95% CI, 1.018–1.219, p = 0.019) and full MNA score < 14 (HR = 9.038, 95% CI, 1.064–76.768, p = 0.044) to be significant independent prognostic factors for survival. Conclusion: Severe malnutrition, as defined by full MNA score < 14, was a predictor of high mortality.