| ‘Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool’ predicts mortality and length of hospital stay in acutely ill elderly (2006) | |||||||||||
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| Malnutrition and its impact on clinical outcome may be underestimated in hospitalised elderly as many screening procedures require measurements of weight and height that cannot often be undertaken in sick elderly patients. The `Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool' (`MUST') has been developed to screen all adults, even if weight and/or height cannot be measured, enabling more complete information on malnutrition prevalence and its impact on clinical outcome to be obtained. In the present study, 150 consecutively admitted elderly patients (age 85 (sd 5·5) years) were recruited prospectively, screened with `MUST' and clinical outcome recorded. Although only 56?% of patients could be weighed, all (n 150) could be screened with `MUST'; 58?% were at malnutrition risk and these individuals had greater mortality (in-hospital and post-discharge, P | |||||||||||
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