OBJECTIVE: Develop a method for the evaluation of patient’s nutritional status through a score that expresses universal nutritional status, as well as investigate if that score would be efficient for the prognostic stratification of advanced heart failure (HF) pts. METHODS: The score was reached by the selection of evaluation methods that would quantify nutritional status: ideal body weight percentage, thickness of tricipital skinfold, percentiles for arm muscular mass circumference, albumin serum level, lymphocyte total count. In order to be validated, the score was applied to a group of 95 pts. Pts were under 65 years old no evidence of consumptive diseases. The score was analyzed to confirm whether it would keep correlation with HF clinical data and whether it would stratify its prognostic. RESULTS: Nutritional status suggesting moderate or severe malnutrition could be observed in 31/95 (32.6%). No correlation was found between nutritional score values and the duration of symptoms, or the level of ventricular dysfunction. Pts with high nutritional score showed a trend towards higher mortality rate (p=0.0606). CONCLUSION: Those data suggest malnutrition is reported by 1/3 of pts with advanced HF. A score comprising 5 parameters for nutritional status showed good correlation with the clinical, global evaluation of pts with HF. A score over 8 identified pts with higher probability of death as outcome, confirming that pts under higher malnutrition exhibit worse evolution.
Malnutrition; cardiac cachexia; dilated cardiomyopathy
