Prevalence of Malnutrition in Adults in a Tertiary Hospital in Muscat

Hospital malnutrition is one of the most controversially discussed topics in the last decade. Malnutrition is a wide term that can be defines as any nutritional imbalance including both overnutrition and under-nutrition (Espahbodi et al., 2014, Barker et al., 2011). Malnutrition is defined as "a state of nutrition in which a deficiency or access (or imbalance) of energy, protein, and other nutrients causes measurable adverse effects on tissue/body form (body shape, size and composition) and function, and clinical outcomes" (Lochs H et al., 2006). Malnutrition includes both under-nutrition and over-nutrition. Hospital malnutrition, mainly refers to under-nutrition, is a major health problem worldwide ranging from 30 to 50% of hospitalized patients (Moriana et al., 2014, Agarwal et al., 2013, Correia et al., 2014, Olivares et al., 2014). Furthermore, hospital malnutrition is associated with poor clinical outcomes such as increased infections complications, pressure ulcer, mortality and prolonged hospital length of stay (Alberda et al., 2009, Agarwal et al., 2013, Banks et al., 210). Recently the public awareness about the serious problem of malnutrition in hospitalized patients and the importance of proper nutritional intervention and protocols has increased dramatically. Indeed, many research focused on developing tools for screening of malnutrition and identifying patients who are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition and examining their validity (Young et al., 2013, Pathirana et al., 2014, Olivares et al., 2014, Moriana et al., 2014, Giovannelli et al., 2014). Although there is a global awareness of hospital malnutrition and the importance of diagnosis of malnutrition among hospitalized patients to prevent deleterious outcomes, in the Sultanate of Oman little is done in this area. Indeed, there is no standard screening method for patients admitted to hospitals to identify malnourished patients and the practice is based on the physician's experience or the hospital protocol. In Oman we lack data on the prevalence of malnutrition in hospitalized patients. Therefore, proper designed studies to identify the prevalence of malnutrition in Oman hospitals and comparing them with international data are highly encouraged. This study will be unique as it will be the first research to determine the prevalence of malnutrition in a tertiary hospital in the Sultanate of Oman. The results of this study will serve as data for a larger multi-center cross-sectional study in Oman hospitals