NUTRITION SCREENING IN OLD-PEOPLE - ITS PLACE IN A COHERENT PRACTICE OF PREVENTIVE HEALTH-CARE

The central demographic reality of our times is the rapid aging of our society. Preventive nutritional and preventive health care of older p eople, therefore, are pressing issues that must be contended with. Sev eral strategies for this are possible, including the broadcasting of g eneral nutritional and health messages to the population, the inclusio n of preventive nutrition and health as part of routine primary care, and nutrition screening: a process of self-identification by the older population in which they judge for themselves whether they are at nut ritional risk and, if so, seek the care of professionals. This review focuses on some of the necessities for screening: sensitive, specific, and inexpensively applied screening devices; and explicit interventio ns that do not have major public hearth benefit for those who screen n egative. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that screening is ben eficial, nor have the benefits of this strategy been compared with its alternatives. Thus, the ethical imperative of screening has not been met: that because the activity is being promoted (it is not initiated by the public), its benefit must be conclusive.