الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Malnutrition among elderly patients usually goes unnoticed and underdiagnosed, this is usually due to the lack of knowledge of the importance of nutritional screening of elderly among the treating physicians.
The MNA-SF is an easy, low cost, time saving and accurate nutritional screening method that can be performed by any healthcare personnel whether it was an intern, nurse or physician. It provides an overview about the nutritional status of the elderly patients. Moreover, it allows for early detection of the risk of malnutrition and malnutrition among elderly, which helps in preventing the increase in its prevalence and consequences.
Many factors have been incriminated in the increased risk of malnutrition among elderly such as the sociodemographic characteristics, the presence of multiple co-morbidities, polypharmacy and age related changes.
Early detection is therefore crucial in order to prevent poor clinical outcomes and to decrease the morbidity and the mortality among the elderly hospitalized patients.
The goal of this study was to calculate the prevalence of malnutrition among the elderly patients admitted at Alexandria Main University Hospital (AMUH) and to detect if there was any correlations between malnutrition and the different studied parameters.
The study’s participants were drawn from the internal medicine wards of AMUH. All patients had to be 65 years or older and were willing to consent to our study. We excluded the patients who refused to participate, had limb amputations or were readmitted during the time of the study.
The patients were screened during the first 48 hours of admission using the MNA-SF after thorough physical examination and history taking that involved inquiries about their social statuses, drug history and previous medical conditions. In addition to that, their laboratory results were analyzed and recorded.
Our study included 214 patients gathered over the period of 4 months, from the 1st of January to the 31st of April.
The studied elderly patients were then divided using the MNA-SF into 3 groups according to their nutritional status: malnourished, at risk of malnourishment and normal nutritional status.
Our study revealed that 33.6% of our elderly studied patients were malnourished, 49.5% were at risk of malnourishment and 16.8% had a normal nutritional status.
In the present study, there was a positive correlation between malnutrition and the increase in age (p= 0.002), living alone (p=0.03), use of anti-ischemic drugs (p=0.014), hypertension (p=0.017), cerebrovascular strokes (p=0.033) and the white blood count (p=0.032).
Furthermore, there was a negative correlation between malnutrition and the serum albumin level (p=0.008) and the serum potassium level (p=0.006).
According to our study age, low serum albumin and the living status (living with others) were the most significant independent variables affecting the nutritional status of the elderly studied patients and all were associated with malnutrition