Use of the Mini Nutritional Assessment to detect frailty in hospitalised older people

ObjectivesThe aims of this study were to: (1) determine the prevalence of undernutrition and frailty in hospitalised elderly patients and (2) evaluate the efficacy of both the Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) screening tool and the MNA short form (MNA-SF) in identifying frailty.Setting and participantsA convenient sample of 100 consecutive patients (75.0 % female) admitted to the Geriatric Evaluation and Management Unit (GEMU) at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in South Australia.MeasurementsFrailty status was determined using Fried's frailty criteria and nutritional status by the MNA and MNA-SF. Optimal cut-off scores to predict frailty were determined by Youden's Index, Receiver Operator Curves (ROC) and area under curve (AUC).ResultsUndernutrition was common. Using the MNA, 40.0% of patients were malnourished and 44.0% were at risk of malnutrition. By Fried's classification, 66.0 % were frail, 30.0 % were pre-frail and 4.0 % robust. The MNA had a specificity of 0.912 and a sensitivity of 0.516 in predicting frailty using the recommended cut-off for malnourishment (ConclusionThe quickly and easily administered MNA-SF appears to be a good tool for predicting both under-nutrition and frailty in elderly hospitalised people. Further studies would show whether the MNA-SF could also detect frailty in other populations of older people.E. Dent, R. Visvanathan, C. Piantadosi, I. Chapma

Sistema fuzzy para predição do desempenho produtivo de frangos de corte de 1 a 21 dias de idade Fuzzy system to predict productive performance of broiler chicks from 1 to 21 days old

Um sistema de inferência fuzzy foi desenvolvido baseado em dados da literatura para predição do consumo de ração, ganho de peso e conversão alimentar de frangos de corte com idade variando de 1 a 21, dias submetidos a diferentes condições térmicas. O sistema fuzzy foi estruturado com base em três variáveis de entrada: idade das aves (semanas), temperatura (°C) e umidade relativa (%) ambientes, sendo que as variáveis de saída consideradas foram: ganho de peso, consumo de ração e conversão alimentar. A inferência foi realizada por meio do método de Mamdani, que consistiu na elaboração de 45 regras e a defuzzificação por meio do método do Centro de Gravidade. Com base nos resultados, ao se compararem os dados da literatura com os obtidos pelo sistema fuzzy proposto, verificou-se desempenho satisfatório na predição das variáveis respostas, com R² da ordem de 0,995; 0,998 e 0,976, respectivamente. O ganho de peso predito pela lógica fuzzy foi validado com dados experimentais de campo, no qual se obteve R² = 0,975, apresentando grande potencial de uso em sistemas de climatização automatizado.<br>A fuzzy inference system was developed based on literature data to predict feed intake, weight gain, and feed conversion of broiler chicks from 1 to 21 day old submitted to different thermal conditions. The fuzzy system was structured based on three input variables: age of chick (weeks), ambient temperature (°C) and ambient relative humidity (%); and the output variables considered were: weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion. The inference was performed using the Mamdani's method, which consisted of the elaboration of 45 rules, and the defuzzification using the Center of Gravity method. Comparing literature data with the results obtained by the fuzzy system proposed, it is possible to conclude that the fuzzy system predicts satisfactorily the weight gain, feed intake and feed conversion, which R² were 0.995, 0.998, and 0.976, respectively. The weight gain predicted by the fuzzy system was validated by experimental field data, which obtained R² = 0.9753, presenting a considerable use potential in automatic acclimatization systems