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PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review looks at the recent medical literature on the association between hospital length of stay and nutritional status. RECENT FINDINGS: Simple anthropometric parameters underestimate the nutritional risk in hospitalized patients. The Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool and Nutritional Risk Screening are simple screening tools that identify patients who require further monitoring. Recent weight loss appears to be the most important single indicator of nutritional status. Body composition measurements identify patients with muscle mass depletion and excess body fat, both of which are significantly associated with increased length of stay. The Subjective Global Assessment is useful at detecting patients with established malnutrition and the Mini Nutritional Assessment for the elderly is useful at detecting patients who need preventive nutritional measures. The Nutritional Risk Index, which incorporates albumin and weight loss, appears to capture both nutritional risk and poor clinical outcome. SUMMARY: Nutritional risk is associated with the length of stay in hospital. The choice of nutritional screening and assessment tools depends on the type of institution (university hospital versus community hospital), the patient populations (acute care versus intermediary care; general hospital versus elderly population) and the resources available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This article will summarize the current findings on the effects of physical activity on human health and well-being. RECENT FINDINGS: Physical activity is associated with enhanced health and reduced risk of all-cause mortality such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, sarcopenia, cognitive disorders, and some forms of cancer. Nevertheless, the effects of exercise with respect to potential health consequences are complex. When untrained or previously sedentary persons undertake vigorous exertion suddenly, the undesired side effects of injuries, dehydration or cardiac arrest are amplified. SUMMARY: It is reasonable to conclude that the risk exposure through physical activity is outweighed by its overall benefits, and health authorities strongly encourage participation in moderate intensity physical activity on a daily basis. In the future, the identification and characterization of particularly inactive sub-groups of the population may facilitate and optimize the planning of public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging alternative to current radiation-based bone densitometry techniques, there is a growing interest in the use of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) measurements for the noninvasive assessment of fracture risk in the management of osteoporosis. However, there are also a multiplicity of technologically different QUS devices available on the market and, so far, no study has compared heel and radius QUS device for the discrimination of subjects with hip fractures. Our study evaluated the ability of three QUS devices (one calcaneal gel-coupled system, one calcaneal water-coupled system, and one radius system) to discriminate osteoporotic from controls subjects, using the same population. We also checked if the combination of two different skeletal sites (i.e., calcaneum and radius) improve the discriminatory ability of the QUS devices. Forty-five women aged 79.1 ± 7.1 yr with hip fractures within the last 4 d were used as the hip-fracture group and compared to 40 healthy controls from 65-87 yr. In addition, 47 young controls, aged 20-40 yr, were used as reference population to express some of the results as T-scores. QUS measurements were performed with the Hologic Sahara, Ge-Lunar Achilles+, and Sunlight Omnisense devices according to the manufacturer''s recommendations. Adjusted odds ratio results showed that a decrease in Omnisense SOS of 1 standard deviation (SD) was associated with a significant increase in fracture risk (OR adj. = 2.83) comparable with Sahara BUA (OR adj. = 2.42) and Achilles BUA (OR adj. = 3.29). However, given the large overlap between the 95% intervals of each odds ratio, no significant difference was found between the devices. Similarly, comparison between the areas under ROC curves did not show any significant difference between all the parameters. Considering the parameters provided per default by each QUS device, the Sahara, Achilles, and Omnisense devices classified correctly 70, 67.5, and 62.5% of the subjects, respectively. Although the OR of the combination of radius and calcaneum is improved (3.62 to 4.74) compared with either one of the single skeletal site, the large confidence intervals do not allow to claim a significant difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]