Introduction:

The Geriatric nutritional risk index is a simple and accurate instrument that allows identifying hospitalized patients with this risk.

Objective:

To assess the prevalence of nutritional risk in patients admitted for presenting a vascular disease.

Methods:

There were evaluated in cross-sectional way 102 patients older than 18 years (65% male) admitted consecutively from October to December, 2018 at the National Institute of Angiology and Vascular Surgery in Havana, Cuba, regardless of the underlying disease and who agreed to participate in the study. The main variable was the proportion of patients with nutritional risk: high risk (<82), moderate (82-92), low (93-98) and without risk (>98); secondary variables were age, sex, body mass index and the concentration of albumin.

Results:

The 12.9% (95% confidence interval: 6,2-19,6); the 16.8% (9,4-24,2) and the 22.8% (14,5-31,3) of the patients had high, moderate, and light nutritional risks, respectively. Only 47.5% (37,6-57,4) of the patients did not present nutritional risk. The age and sex showed no correlation with the nutritional risk; the concentration of albumin and body mass index and the index of nutritional risk were significantly associated (R2: 0.98 and 0.59, respectively).

Conclusions:

The prevalence of patients with nutritional risk is high in the hospital scope and it can be evaluated through the geriatric nutritional risk index.

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