Nutritional care for hospital in-patients is potentially important but challenging.
To investigate the association between nutritional status and clinical outcomes.
Eight prevalence surveys were performed at Haukeland University Hospital, Norway, during 2008-2009. In total 3279 patients were classified as being at nutritional risk or not according to the Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS 2002) tool. The initial four questions of NRS 2002 assess dietary intake, weight loss, body mass index (BMI) and illness severity.
The overall prevalence of nutritional risk was 29%. Adjusted mean days for hospitalisation was 8.3 days for patients at nutritional risk and 5.0 days for patients not at risk (p