Calf circumference as a predictor of hospital malnutrition in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Abstract

Introduction: Malnutrition in hospitalized patients with
comorbidities is a health problem, which determines a negative prognosis in their evolution. Finding an anthropometric parameter that is related to malnutrition would help to rapidly
characterize critically ill patients with comorbidities and risk of
malnutrition.
Objective: To determine the relationship between calf  circumference with hospital malnutrition in a patient with type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Material and methods: Research with a quantitative,
non-experimental, cross-sectional design. The final study
sample consisted of 51 adult patients diagnosed with type 2
diabetes mellitus, hospitalized during the period May to July
2022; in the internal medicine service of the regional teaching hospital Las Mercedes de Chiclayo - Peru. Patients with a
hospital stay of more than six days in the service and with a
time of diabetes disease of more than one year were included. Nutritional assessment was performed using the GLIM
criteria; Calf circumference was measured as a predictive anthropometric diagnostic test through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis; to determine the cut-off
points for calf circumference, the sensitivity, specificity, positive or negative predictive value of malnutrition in the patients were calculated.
Results: 62.7% patients were diagnosed as malnourished;
the mean calf circumference was 31.73 (SD±5.24); of glycosylated hemoglobin was 9.23% (SD±2.88), the time of diabetes mellitus disease was 9.09 years (SD±7.24), the body
weight (kg) was 63.92 Kg (DE±20.94) and the mean hospitalization time was 14.96 days (SD±11.09). When evaluating the calf circumference through the ROC curve (AUC), the cutoff point of 31.5 cm was determined for women (sensitivity = 81.25%, specificity = 62.5%) with an area under the ROC curve of 0.687 and for males, the cut-off point was 33.9 cm (sensitivity = 81.25%, specificity = 66.67%) with an area under the ROC curve of 0.688.
Conclusion: The results indicate that calf circumference is
a good anthropometric test for predicting hospital malnutrition in adult patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus.