[Diagnosis and screening for malnutrition].

Undernutrition is frequent in hospitalised patients in western countries. Undernutrition is not only the result of poor intakes but is often triggered by metabolic disorders, which result from disease. Undernutrition per se is a debiliting factor of outcome of patients. Because of this complex pathophysiology, the diagnosis of undernutrition is difficult. However it is possible first to detect for all patients the risk of undernutrition with simple clinical parameters and secondary to screen patients against undernutrition with appropriate index such as nutritional risk index developed by Buzby et al. a global strategy can be proposed to avoid undernutrition in hospitalised patients.