Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

Malnutrition is associated with worse prognosis, a higher risk of infections and complications, worse regeneration of wounds, longer hospitalization, the increase of the total costs of treatment and higher mortality rate. Therefore, early identification of patients suffering from malnutrition should be considered a priority and so should be the actions aiming at the prevention of this problem. One of the most popular markers of malnutrition is lymphocyte concentrate. It is very cheap and routinely used. The aim of the study is to investigate the influence that the protein acquired from the kitchen diet has on lymphocyte concentrate in comparison to the influence that the protein acquired from the industrial diet has on this concentrate. The study group consists of enterally fed post-stroke patients (58 people: 34 fed home-made diet and 28 fed industrial diet). Patients were fed for 14 days. In the kitchen diet group, there was 28.5 g of protein and a decrease in concentration was observed (p<0.05). In the industrial diet group, there was 53.5 g of protein and an increase in lymphocyte concentration has been demonstrated (p<0.05). Lymphocyte concentrate is sensitive on to protein content in diet and it can be used as a cheap and popular marker in malnutrition.

Biography

Maja Czerwińska Rogowska is currently a PhD student at Pomeranian Medical University, Poland. She has her expertise in enteral feeding and treatment malnutrition patients.

E-mail: majaczerwinska89@gmail.com