Abstract
Objectives
To provide an overview of the prevalence rates and risk factors of dehydration among
nursing home residents.
Design
Systematic literature review.
Setting
Nursing homes.
Participants
Nursing home residents or institutionalized long-term care residents.
Measurements
A systematic literature review was executed on March 15, 2018, using the databases
PubMed, CINAHL, and EMBASE to retrieve all articles focused on the prevalence rates
and risk factors for acute and chronic dehydration. Studies were included if the target
population involved nursing home residents or institutionalized long-term care residents.
Results
Nineteen studies were included in this systematic review. Prevalence rates of dehydration
varied between 0.8% and 38.5% and were measured using different methods. Furthermore,
49 potential risk factors for dehydration were identified. Of the 12 potential risk
factors that were investigated in more than 1 study, cognitive impairment and fever
were significantly associated with dehydration among nursing home residents.
Conclusions/implications
Dehydration is a relevant and frequently occurring problem among nursing home residents.
This systematic review shows that a wide variety of methods are used to assess dehydration
and that it is often unclear which type of dehydration (chronic or acute) is measured.
This makes it difficult to compare prevalence rates among studies. Moreover, only
2 of 49 potential risk factors (fever and cognitive impairment) were more than once
significantly associated with dehydration in the respective studies. Most of the other
risk factors were assessed by only 1 study or showed inconsistent results. Therefore,
more research into dehydration among nursing home residents is needed.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: July 06, 2018
Footnotes
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
