Malnutrition screening in outpatients receiving hyperbaric oxygen therapy: an opportunity for improvement?

by HBOT News | Oct 1, 2018 | Chronic Wounds, Diabetes

Outpatients who receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT) may represent a group at significant risk of malnutrition owing to the underlying conditions that are often treated with HBOT (e.g., non-healing diabetic wounds and radiation-induced skin injury). In this issue, See and colleagues provide new, preliminary evidence of the prevalence of malnutrition in a small group of HBOT outpatients treated in an Australian hospital, reporting that approximately one-third of patients receiving HBOT were at risk of malnutrition. To our knowledge, routine malnutrition screening is not available in HBOT centres providing outpatient treatment, which may be a key gap in the nutrition care of these patients. Malnutrition screening was developed to identify those at risk of malnutrition across the healthcare continuum.