nutrition, home care, elderly over 65 years of age, Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST)

The aim of the study was to compare three nutritional status screening and evaluation tools of the elderly in their homes. Testing of measuring instruments, MNA, SGA, and MUST took place in the homes of 120 seniors in selected areas of the Czech and Slovak Rep. The study included 120 seniors. For testing of the relationships and dependencies, Pearson?s correlation coefficient, t and Fisher tests were used. All tests were to a large degree correlated (pMNA = 0,0049; pMUST = -0,537; pSGA = -0,578) with the body mass index of the seniors. It was confirmed that the tools for assessing nutritional status in the study showed significant differences regarding the classification of patients at risk of malnutrition and/or malnourished patients. We conclude that MNA appeared to be a more appropriate tool for nutritional assessment of the elderly living in their homes. SGA and MUST provided rather subjective evaluation of the nutritional status and did not furnish an in-depth categorization of malnutrition.