PD264 - NUTRITION-RELATED PRACTICES AND RESOURCES IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HOSPITALS: A CLINICAL SURVEY

PD264

NUTRITION-RELATED PRACTICES AND RESOURCES IN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC HOSPITALS: A CLINICAL SURVEY

J. Cepeda Marte^1,*, I. A. Osuna-Padilla², M. Lazo Zumaeta¹, J. F. Balaguer Santos¹, S. Carmenate Suarez¹, S. Ochoa Muñoz¹, K. Polanco Lima¹, A. C. Valenzuela González¹

¹IMTSAG, Universidad Iberoamericana, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, ²Clinical Nutrition, Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias , Mexico, Mexico

 

Rationale: Despite strong recommendations for guideline-based nutritional screening and assessment, practice remains inconsistent, with potential implications for patients' outcomes.

Methods: An online clinician survey of 32 Dominican Republic nutritionists from 13 public hospitals examined nutrition support teams, local feeding guidelines, and nutritional screening and assessment techniques.

Results: Nutritional support teams were available in 96.3% of hospitals (figure 1), and 80.6% of centers reported adherence to local feeding guidelines. Nutritional screening was implemented in 84% of units, with the NRS-2002 tool being the most commonly used (67.8%). However, 29% reported a lack of follow-up for patients not identified as at nutritional risk.

A nutritional assessment was performed in 75% of patients identified as being at nutritional risk, and among these, ongoing nutritional monitoring was conducted in 73.4% of cases. Anthropometric measurements were the most frequently used method for assessing muscle mass (65.6%). 

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Conclusion: Dominican public hospitals appear to have broad structural availability of clinical nutrition services, but implementation of more comprehensive practices remains heterogeneous. 

References: Thibault, R., Abbasoglu, O., Ioannou, E., Meija, L., Ottens-Oussoren, K., Pichard, C., ... & Bischoff, S. C. (2021). ESPEN guideline on hospital nutrition. Clinical Nutrition, 40(12), 5684-5709.

 

Krznarić, Ž., Bender, D. V., Kovač, M. B., Cuerda, C., van Ginkel-Res, A., Hiesmayr, M., ... & Gallego, D. M. T. (2024). Clinical nutrition in primary care: ESPEN position paper. Clinical Nutrition, 43(6), 1678-1683.

Disclosure of Interest: None declared