Pre-operative nutritional assessment

Protein-energy undernutrition, or the possibility of its development, has b een documented to occur frequently in surgical patients admitted to hospita l. Nutritional status is known to deteriorate over the course of the hospit al stay, with poor awareness by medical and nursing staff as to the deleter ious effects of impaired nutritional status on clinical outcome and hospita l costs. While there is no consensus on the best method for assessment of t he nutritional status of surgical patients pre-operatively, there are a num ber of techniques available. These techniques can be divided into two types , those suitable for screening for nutrition risk on admission to hospital and those used to fully assess nutritional status. Both techniques have the ir limitations, but if used correctly, and their limitations recognized, sh ould identify the appropriate degree of nutritional intervention for an ind ividual patient in a timely and cost-effective manner. The techniques curre ntly available for nutritional screening and nutritional assessment are rev iewed, and their applicability to the Irish setting are discussed in the pr esent paper.