Phase angle and rectus femoris cross-sectional area as predictors of severe malnutrition and their relationship with complications in outpatients with post-critical SARS-CoV2 disease

Abstract

More than 75% of the post-critical COVID-19 survivors had malnutrition, and approximately half were obese. PhA, SPhA, RF-CSA, and RF-CSA/h, when applied to the assessment of body composition in post-critical COVID-19 patients, showed moderate-to-high correlation with other morphofunctional parameters and good performance to predict severe malnutrition and to assess complications and aggressive therapy requirements during ICU admission. Besides being readily available methods, BIVA and NU^® can help improve the morphofunctional assessment of malnutrition in post-critical COVID-19 survivors; however, more studies are needed to assess the performance of these methods in other populations.