Association Between Malnutrition and Clinical Outcomes in the Intensive Care Unit: A Systematic Review

What is it about?

The systematic review: 1) demonstrated that malnutrition independently increases the risk of ICU readmission and prolonged length of stay as well as hospital mortality in critically ill patients 2) highlights the importance of using a validated nutrition assessment tool such as the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) because only the SGA had consistent prognostic validity among the myriad of nutrition screening and assessment tools 3) highlights that the prevalence of malnutrition varies widely among ICUs

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Why is it important?

The validity of the association between malnutrition and poor clinical outcomes is hampered by the use of unvalidated biochemical parameters of nutritional status (e.g. albumin). Other studies that used nutrition screening tools to determine the association between malnutrition risk and poor clinical outcomes have inherent misclassification bias. This is the first systematic review that included studies that used validated nutrition assessment tool to demonstrate the association between malnutrition and clinical outcomes in the ICU.

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