Comparison between the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition and the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism definitions for the prevalence of malnutrition in geriatric rehabilitation care.

Aim: The recently proposed Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria may accurately reflect the nutritional status of older adults because they use information such as reduced muscle mass and chronic and acute disease to diagnose malnutrition. This study aimed to determine the prevalence and characteristics of malnutrition in older adults assessed by the GLIM and the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) diagnostic criteria for malnutrition (DCM) in post-acute geriatric care.
Methods: This cross-sectional study included older patients admitted to rehabilitation care units. Malnutrition was evaluated using GLIM-DCM and ESPEN-DCM using a two-step process (initial screening and subsequent steps). The prevalence and differences observed between GLIM-DCM and ESPEN-DCM were reported, and the determinants of each criterion were identified.
Results: This study included 335 older patients (mean ± SD, age 80.0 ± 7.5 years; 54.0% women). The prevalence of older patients diagnosed with GLIM-DCM and ESPEN-DCM was 66.9% and 59.1%, respectively, and the agreement between ESPEN-DCM and GLIM-DCM was 80.9%. The results of multivariate analyses showed that all items of the phenotypic and etiologic criteria were independent determinants for GLIM-DCM, whereas disease burden/inflammation (P = 0.996), included in the etiologic criteria of GLIM-DCM, were not determinants of ESPEN-DCM.
Conclusion: This study reported the prevalence of malnutrition according to GLIM-DCM and the differences in the characteristics of patients diagnosed with malnutrition based on GLIM-DCM and those diagnosed based on ESPEN-DCM in geriatric rehabilitation care units. Further studies are required to investigate the prevalence of malnutrition in different care settings. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2020; 20: 1221-1227.
(© 2020 Japan Geriatrics Society.)