Nutrition in Wound Healing
Resource to help raise awareness of the role of nutrition in wound healing
Identifying Malnutrition - Weight Loss
Unintended weight loss is often associated with malnutrition, yet it is often difficult to identify those with weight loss as patients are seldomly weighed. All nurses should have access to calibrated scales and patients should be weighed on a regular basis (Ripley, 2006). Unintended weight loss of 10% or more over a period of 3 months should lead to a thorough dietary assessment (Kemp, 2001). Below is an example of how to calculate the percentage of weight loss.
For example, for a patient who was 60 kg and now weighs 45 kg,
60-45 ÷ 60 = 0.25 0.25 X 100 = 25 25% weight loss.
