Paper
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Nutritional status of institutionalized people with dementia
Chia-Chi Chang, PhD, RN, Nursing, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan
| Learning Objective #1: The learner will be able to understand the nutritional status of institutionalized people with dementia |
| Learning Objective #2: The learner will be able to understand the associated factors with nutritional status of institutionalized people with dementia |
According to pervious studies, nutritional status of elderly is associated with cognitive impairment and dementia have high risk of developing malnutrition. There were no studies on nutritional issues among elderly with dementia in Taiwan nursing home. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nutritional status and associated factors of institutionalized people with dementia by using construct questionnaires, physical examination, and charts reviews. There were 101 dementia elderly participated in this study, 42 were male and 59 were female. The mean of their age was 80.1 years, most of them were Taiwanese, illiteracy, and widow or widower. The mean of accepting institutional care was 26.8 months and mean duration of dementia diagnosis was 51.8 months. The mean of SPMSQ score, ADL score, and EdFED score were 2.4, 38.7 and 6.5 points.
The results were found that 21.8% of dementia elderly could not self-feeding and the mean of eating time was 14.2 minutes. The mean of body height and weight were 153.8 cm and 52.5 Kg. The mean of BMI was 22.1. According to the MNA scales, 20.8 % of dementia elderly had good nutritional statues, but 41.6 % had risk of malnutrition and 37.6 % were malnutrition. The study were found that the MNA scores were associated with age(r=-0.27,p<0.01), SPMSQ (r=0.4, p<0.01), ADL (r=0.56, p<0.01), EdFED ( r=-0.45, p<0.01) and BMI(r=0.52,P<0.01).
The results of this study were found that dementia elderly had high percentage of malnutrition. Giving the adequacy nutritional care could promote their cognitive function and improve their ADL. The results of this study help health professionals to gain better understanding of nutritional status of dementia elderly and provide directions of developing future nutritional interventions or training programs in order to maintain quality of life in institutionalized people with dementia.