Hospital Malnutrition in Latin America

In Latin American hospitals, the malnutrition numbers are strikingly high; disease-related malnutrition has been reported in nearly 50% of adult patients in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Uruguay. To address this problem, we worked as part of a feedM.E. Latin American Study Group. Together, we gathered evidence of how malnutrition incurs excessive human and financial tolls on healthcare systems in Latin America and how appropriate nutrition care can improve patients’ clinical outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Despite abundant evidence, we found that hospital malnutrition is often overlooked and undertreated. Clinicians do not consistently follow best nutrition practices because barriers—lack of awareness, time, money, and training—stand in the way. Our study was intended as a call to action for healthcare professionals throughout Latin America, suggesting use of a simple and efficient Nutrition Care Pathway to screen all patients on admission or at initiation of care, assess their needs and provide supportive nutrition when needed, and deliver routine follow-up care with postdischarge nutrition planning, treatment, and monitoring. In an invited commentary for the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, Juan B. Ochoa Gautier noted that lack of caregiver awareness was not the only cause of hospitalacquired malnutrition. Ochoa Gautier expressed concern that the problem was also related to limited understanding of the etiology of disease-related malnutrition, as well as shortfalls in identifying and addressing other barriers to delivery of optimal nutrition care specific to each hospital. Surely most healthcare professionals in Latin America and elsewhere would agree with Ochoa Gautier that best-practice nutrition care happens in hospital and community health systems when