Cuestionario semicuantitativo para la valoración de la ingesta dietética del paciente hospitalizado: una herramienta sencilla para la práctica clínica Semiquantitative questionnaire to assess inpatient's dietary intake: a simple tool for clinical practice

Introduction: The quantification and recording of food intake of inpatients is one of the keys of the nutritional care plan. Aim: To evaluate the validity of a semiquantitative questionnaire to assess the food intake of the meals included in the hospital diet. Methods: Cross-sectional study in routine clinical practice. It was compared two techniques to evaluate food intake: double weighted (before and after intake) and a semiquantitative observational questionnaire which had five categories [all (> 80%), almost all (80-60%), half (60-40%), almost nothing (40-20%) or nothing (< 20%)], both performed by a dietitian. The comparison between the two tools was conducted with quadratic weighted kappa and confidence interval of 95%. Results: A total of 1,980 evaluations were done. It was observed by the semiquantitative questionnaire that in 50% of cases everything was eaten, 19% almost all, in 13% the half, 9% less than a half, and 9% nothing. The median intake was 76.8 (IQR 45.8)%. It was observed that there was a satisfactory agreement between the technique of double weight and visual assessment of the intake with a κ value of 0.907 (95% CI 0.894 to 0.925). Conclusion: The semiquantitative questionnaire used in this study to quantify patients’ food intake was accurate and appropriate to be performed by a qualified professional.