Failure to Thrive in the Elderly: Exploration of the Concept and Delineation of Psychiatric Components

Findings from an exploratory study of the relationships between routine clinical laboratory tests and the clinical status of elderly patients living in a nursing home or congregate housing facility demonstrate that low albumin and anemia are associated with decreased survival and with self-care deficits, cognitive impairment, depression, and summary measures of the severity of medical illness. The interrelationships observed among these variables support the usefulness of the concept of failure to thrive. Although albumin can serve as a nutritional marker, findings on its relationship with sedimentation rate, triiodothyronine uptake, fasting plasma amino acids, and retinol-binding protein levels suggest that the low albumin related to failure to thrive is not a simple reflection of steady-state deficits in protein-calorie nutrition; it appears to be sensitive to more direct effects of disease and inflammation or to the interactions between nutrition and illness.