PP119 - VISUAL PORTION SELECTION REVEALS LOW EXPECTED EATING CAPACITY IN HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS REGARDLESS OF NUTRITIONAL RISK STATUS
PP119
VISUAL PORTION SELECTION REVEALS LOW EXPECTED EATING CAPACITY IN HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS REGARDLESS OF NUTRITIONAL RISK STATUS
A. Rytter1, J. H. Hundebøll1, I. Wessel1,2, A. Hardis1, M. L. Sporring1,*
1Clinical Nutrition Center, Department of Transplantation and Digestive Diseases, 2Department of Otolaryngology and Audiology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark
Rationale: Hospitalized patients are frequently at nutritional risk and often fail to meet their energy needs due to fasting, treatment and nutritional impact symptoms. Appetite is influenced not only by physiology, cognition, and medication, but also by food‑related factors such as the environment, smell, presentation, and portion size. This study examined hospitalized patients’ expected eating capacity using standardized meal photographs.
Methods: A total of 134 nutritional risk patients (NRS-2002) hospitalized for ≥4 days were included. Patients estimated their expected intake of the upcoming dinner by choosing between photos representing ¼, ½, ¾, 1, or 1¼ of a standard portion, or by selecting “none” or “total tube/parenteral feeding.” The same procedure was applied in the same wards to a cross‑sectional sample of 208 unselected medical, surgical, and oncology patients independent of nutritional risk status.
Results: Tube or parenteral nutrition was more common in the nutritional risk group than in the cross‑sectional group (25% vs. 5%). In the risk group, 48% expected to eat a quarter portion or less compared with 47% in the cross‑sectional group. The proportion expecting to consume ½ portion was 15% and 38%, respectively. Only 10% in both groups expected to eat more than 75% of a standard portion.
Conclusion: Both the nutritionally at‑risk group and the cross‑sectional group were markedly small eaters, with only 10% expecting to consume ≥75% of a standard dinner portion. Notably, almost half of all patients anticipated eating <25% of a portion, indicating that extremely low expected intake was not directly linked to nutritional risk status. The results highlight the need for hospital meals with small volumes and high nutrient density and suggest that patients can reliably estimate their eating capacity visually.
Disclosure of Interest: None declared