Introduction: disease-related malnutrition has a high prevalence, with clinical consequences potentially severe for the patient, and of high economic impact for the healthcare system.
Objective: to perform a review of the literature regarding the economic burden of disease-related malnutrition, to assess complications, and to determine the usefulness of enteral or oral nutritional supplementation from a cost analysis perspective.
Methods: a review of the literature up to June 2016 was carried out regarding economic costs of disease-related malnutrition and cost analysis of nutritional treatment, with special focus on retrieval of systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and randomized clinical trials.
Results: a total of 31 publications were selected, 15 on costs of disease-related malnutrition and 16 on costs of treatment. Disease-related malnutrition increases health care costs in relation to a longer hospital stay, higher incidence of infectious and non-infectious complications, greater need of treatment, increase in readmissions, more prolonged stay in the intensive care unit and/or the need of referral to continuing care centers at discharge. Publications regarding treatment with oral nutritional supplements suggest that these oral supplements are cost-effective and cost-beneficial both in ambulatory and hospitalized patients.
Conclusions: disease-related malnutrition causes an increase in health care costs that could be minimized, among other approaches, by an early diagnosis and treatment for which oral nutritional supplements are cost-effective and cost-beneficial.