Oral nutritional supplements intake and nutritional status among inpatients admitted in a tertiary hospital.

INTRODUCTION Malnutrition is very common in hospitals and inpatients with prescription of oral nutritional supplementation have improvement of the nutritional status. OBJECTIVES To detect the total acceptance rate and a possible association between oral nutritional supplements intake and nutritional status. METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out among 398 inpatients. Fifteen types of supplements were analyzed and nutritional status was detected by Subjective Global Assessment (SGA). Rest-ingestion index (RI) was obtained and Modified Poisson's regression was used to detect associations between nutritional status and intake of nutritional supplements. RESULTS The prevalence of malnutrition was 43.7% and overall acceptance of supplements was around 75%. Industrialized supplements have better acceptance among well-nourished inpatients and patients who ate less than 80% of the supplement offered (industrialized or homemade) had higher risk for malnutrition (48%). CONCLUSION There was an association between oral nutritional supplements intake and nutritional status, despite the good acceptance rate.