The use of alternative or direct anthropometric measurements to assess the risk of malnutrition in nursing homes

Background Malnutrition and the risk of malnutrition are frequent in institutionalised elderly. In order to asses this status, many screening tools are available. Among these, the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) uses three criteria, the first of which is the Body Mass Index (BMI). Considering this, if it is not possible to obtain the height and weight by using a direct method, then alternative measurements are used to either calculate or estimate the BMI. The aim …