Bedömning av malnutrition hos den äldre patienten inom akutsjukvård

Sammanfattning: ABSTRACT The right nutrition is of immense importance for all human beings and balance is needed between energy intake and consumption. A multitude of diseases can increase the body’s energy demand. Malnutrition is defined as an imbalance or lack of energy that causes changes in the body’s function. Malnutrition is prevalent among the elderly and multimorbidity and can cause severe complications, which can cause hospital visits or seeking emergency medical services. Emergency room wait time has increased the past years primarily for elderly patients.  The aim was to describe the significance of assessing malnutrition in elderly emergency medical services patients.  The selected method was literature review. The study comprises 13 articles that all have a quantitative approach. The articles were found in the PubMed and CINAHL databases. All articles were in English and published between 2006-2017.  The results demonstrated the importance of early nutrition screening and that there are several different screening tools that can be used within emergency medical services. Furthermore, the results demonstrated the risk with malnutrition and complications that can arise. If malnutrition is prevented early there are great health benefits and reduced suffering for patients. More warnings signs that the patient can be in risk of malnutrition emerges, for example increasing age.  More research is needed about nutrition screening in emergency medical services, above all in emergency rooms. This is to reduce the risk for not discovering malnourished patients and thus not give them the nutrition treatment needed. The study showed that there were several functional screening tools that can be used within emergency medical services.