Nutritional care protocol proposal for patients living with HIV without antiretroviral therapy, treated at the center of diagnostic references of San Martín de Quillota Hospital, Chile

Abstract

The nutritional care for HIV patients in Chile is a challenge for public health due to the absence of ministerial guidelines to ensure standardized and timely nutritional care that helps to enhance immunity and delay immunological failure from a preventive approach. To design a proposal of protocol for nutritional care to optimize the nutritional management in a group of patients living with HIV. The design considered an initial diagnosis (patients and nutritional care characterization in a secondary public health service) to identify local needs, which was complemented with bibliographical precedents. Protocol content was validated by expert opinion, using a Likert questionnaire evaluating three variables: format, protocol's plan of nutritional care, and content quality. The proposed protocol consists of flowcharts care, nutritional care procedures and educational material. The validation process involved five experts, according to whom more time for patient care should be assigned, integration of the multidisciplinary team should be consider in the flowcharts and in short term reliability and applicability of the protocol should be assessed. This proposal is the first document oriented to nutritional management of outpatient with HIV from the early stages of the disease in Chile. Studies are needed to measure the impact of nutritional intervention in patients with HIV without antiretroviral therapy.