Objective To screen nutritional risk of hospitalized patients with respiratory diseases by nutritional risk screening 2002 (NRS 2002), and to evaluate nutritional risk rate and nutritional support status, and to explore the effect on clinical outcomes of patients who had nutritional risk and the correlation of NRS 2002 results and malnutrition.

Methods A total of 2 067 patients were completed nutritional risk screening via NRS 2002 in the first 24 hours after their admission to the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care, West China Hospital of Sichuan University from July 2015 to December 2016. They were divided into nutritional risk group and non-nutritional risk group according to the nutritional risk results. The differences in age, gender, weight, laboratory tests, nutritional treatment, length of hospital stay, total hospitalization cost, and clinical outcomes were observed. The consistency between NRS 2002 nutrition risk screening results and malnutrition was further analyzed.

Results At the time of admission, the overall nutritional risk of patients in the Respiratory Department and Critical Care Unit was 36.91% (36.44% for men and 37.47% for women). The overall rate of malnutrition was 65.56%(1 355/2 067). The rate of nutrition support was 8.12% in the nutritional risk group and was 1.22% in the non-nutritional risk group. The age, height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) were significantly different between the two groups (P < 0.05). The albumin on admission, total protein on day 7, albumin on day 14, hemoglobin during the hospitalization and creatinine on day 1 in the nutritional risks group were lower than those in the non-nutritional risk group (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in hospital stay between the two groups. The total hospitalization cost in the nutritional risk group was higher than that in non-nutritional risk group (P < 0.05). The consistency of albumin and NRS 2002 score was poor, the consistency of BMI and NRS 2002 score was general, the Kappa values of the consistency were 0.207 and 0.468, respectively (P < 0.001). The adverse clinical outcome rate in nutritional risk group was higher than that in non-nutritional risk group (P < 0.05).

Conclusions The nutritional risk rate in patients with respiratory diseases is high, but the nutrition support rate is low. The level of nutritional risk and the severity of malnutrition may affect clinical outcomes of patients.