Underweight elderly patients who have difficulty performing routine daily activities such as eating and bathing are at greatest risk to die in the hospital, new Saint Louis University research shows.
The findings are published in the May/June issue of the Journal of Health, Nutrition, and Aging, and are adjusted to factor in the severity of an illness and a patient's nutritional status.
The study examined the medical records of more than 1,700 elderly patients who were hospitalized during a one-year period at a university teaching hospital.
"The inability to care for yourself puts you at greatest risk of death in a hospital," said David R. Thomas, M.D., professor of geriatrics at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and principal investigator for the study. "But that's wonderful news because you can improve your ability to function with good physical therapy and intensive rehabilitation."
Dr. Thomas says his is the first study that examines connections between the many factors that influence death in the hospital.
"Previous reports have examined individual factors that influence hospital outcomes. Functional status, how sick the person is, and his or her nutritional status have all been shown to be important individually. We thought it was important to look at the interaction among these different variables."
Functional status is a person's ability to take care of his own basic needs, such as feeding and dressing himself, bathing, using the restroom, moving from a bed to a chair or walking.
"We discovered that the combination of functional status and low body mass index best predict death in the hospital," Thomas said.