Introduction: Nutritional status is a determining factor in the progress of diseases. There are different methods for its evaluation, but they generally require many resources. However, the laboratory nutritional risk assessment CONUT, or Control Nutritional (Nutritional Control), is a widely validated, effective alternative. Hospitalized patients have different pathologies than primary care outpatients and these pathologies may be aggravated by nutritional status. Therefore, this work aims to determine differences in the nutritional risk of hospitalized patients versus primary care outpatients as measured by the CONUT method.
Method: From July 1 to December 31, 2019, nutritional risk was estimated using the CONUT method in all patients admitted to the hospital and patients who had an initial consultation in primary care in Ronda, Spain. The sample was analyzed as a whole and in groups according to origin (hospitalization vs. primary care) and sex.
Results: Of the 7,741 patients studied, 59% were women and 41% men. In regard to origin, 61.7% were primary care patients and 38.3% were hospitalized patients. In the total study population, 90.6% of patients had no nutritional risk, 2.2% had severe risk, 7% moderate risk, and 0.2% mild risk. Significant differences were found in the nutritional risk profiles of hospitalized patients versus primary care patients as well as according to sex.
Conclusions: There are differences in nutritional risk between hospitalized and primary care patients and between men and women. Use of the CONUT method in these populations allows for corrective measures to be taken according to the patient type.
Nutritional status; Inpatients; Outpatients; Laboratory.