Specialists recommend regular health care visits for dietary assessment and counseling

According to a new American Heart Association scientific statement released today, it’s time to include some form of dietary assessment and counseling in regular health care visits. Circulation: Cardiovascular quality and outcomes, American Heart Association Journal.

A statement written by a group of nutrition and cardiovascular disease experts recommends the adoption of rapid dietary screening tools that can be integrated into electronic medical records platforms in all healthcare settings.

When dealing with modifiable risk factors during regular clinic visits, dietary patterns and quality are not a priority. Given the evidence that diet contributes to illness and death, it is a risk factor worth continuous screening“

Maya Vadiveloo, Ph.D, RD, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Nutrition Science, University of Rhode Island Health Sciences

Vadive Lou Chair of the Statement Writing Group. Poor diet quality outperforms all other mortality risk factors, accounting for approximately 11 million deaths and cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths worldwide. Countries of the world.

The statement authors reviewed 15 existing screening tools and evaluated each to provide insights on the feasibility of incorporating evidence-based dietary screening tools into their daily work.

The authors list a number of reasons why members of the health care team cannot deal with the quality of diet during regular office visits. Lack of training and knowledge. Lack of time and redemption. Often competing requests during a short office visit. And its nutritional services are not integrated into many healthcare environments.

“But these barriers can be overcome,” Vadiveloo said. “We want an effective and reliable way to evaluate a diet that reflects the best science. Most of the tools we evaluate take less than 10 minutes to use.” The three tools meet the criteria set out in the statement and provide a framework that helps practices incorporate dietary screening into their workflows.

The Powell and Greenberg screening tools ask two questions about fruit and vegetable consumption, sugar-rich foods and juice consumption. Participant’s Rapid Diet Assessment-Simplified Assessment and Mediterranean Diet Compliance Screener asks more than 10 questions and covers major food groups, and processed food and alcohol consumption.

The keys to an effective diet screening tool are:

• Use an evidence-based approach.
• Evaluate total dietary patterns as well as single foods and nutrients.
• speed;
• Ability to support patients by providing actionable next steps. And
• Ability to track and monitor changes in diet over time.

“There are other tools beyond what was evaluated, and additional tools may be developed,” Vadiveloo said.

This statement does not endorse any specific screening tool, but it does facilitate important conversations between clinicians, individuals with dietary/lifestyle expertise, and information technology professionals, and it may We encourage the adoption of rapid dietary screening tools for adults in medical and preventive settings.

“In addition to assessing the quality of the diet, an important factor is to target actionable changes-helping patients set achievable dietary goals-and follow-up on their next visit. Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center Cardiovascular Nutrition Team Chief and Senior Scientist on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.

Areas of future research include testing and validation of screening tools in diverse populations and specialized clinical populations (such as pediatrics, geriatrics) and assessing the feasibility of implementing these tools in a clinical setting. It will be.

A healthy diet can improve the risk and consequences of cardiovascular disease. What you eat (and how much you eat) can affect other controllable risk factors such as cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, and overweight.