Mini‐Nutritional Assessment Short‐Form as a useful method of predicting poor 1‐year outcome in elderly patients undergoing orthopedic surgery

AIM: The present study aimed to determine whether the Mini-Nutritional Assessment Short-Form (MNA-SF) can predict the 1-year outcome of orthopedic fracture surgery in elderly patients. METHODS: This 1-year prospective study assessed nutrition using the MNA-SF at baseline, and postoperatively at 6 and 12 months. Repeated measures analysis of covariance was used to examine functional change over time for two MNA-SF categories. Multivariable logistic regression analysis with forward stepwise modeling was carried out to identify risk factors of functional decline, emergency department visit, hospital readmission and mortality at follow up. RESULTS: There were 312 participants, 11 of whom died (3.53%) during 1-year follow up. The mean age was 74.04 ± 7.65 years. A total of 88.1% and 11.9% of the participants were well nourished (MNA-SF 12-14 points) or at risk of undernutrition (0-11 points), respectively. For MNA-SF as a continuous variable, lower MNA-SF scores were associated with a significantly higher risk of emergency department visit at 6-month follow up, and mortality at 12-month follow up (emergency room visit, adjusted odds ratio 0.78, 95% CI 0.63-0.96, P < 0.05; mortality, adjusted odds ratio 0.73, 95% CI 0.57-0.94, P < 0.05). No association was found between functional decline and hospital readmission, and MNA-SF scores. For MNA-SF categories, functional decline was more profound in patients at risk of undernutrition than in well-nourished patients, especially 6-12 months postoperatively. CONCLUSIONS: The MNA-SF could be an effective and non-invasive preoperative screening tool to predict functional decline, emergency department visit and mortality during the year after surgery. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2017; 17: 2361-2368.