To investigate the status quo of nutritional risks and malnutrition of orthopedic inpatients and to provide an objective basis for standardizing nutritional support for orthopedic inpatients.

Patients who were hospitalized in the Department of Orthopedics, Ningbo First Hospital between November 2013 and December 2015 were continuously selected as respondents by convenience sampling. Their general data were recorded in an electronic data collection system (EDC) . Then the patients were assessed for nutritional risks with nutritional risk screening 2002 (NRS 2002) , and their status quo of malnutrition was identified according to recommendatory standards of guidelines.

Totally 451 out of the 3 083 patients suffered from nutritional risks, and the incidence of nutritional risks was 14.63%. 59 of them were diagnosed with malnutrition. Patients with hip fracture showed the highest incidence of malnutrition, followed by those with pelvic fracture and thoracolumbar fracture, and their incidences of nutritional risks were 56.55%, 51.61% and 27.93%, respectively. There were statistically significant differences between patients of different ages (P<0.05) . The incidences of hip fracture and thoracolumbar fracture patients aged above 70 were 79.10% (140/177) and 74.19% (92/124) , respectively, higher than those of patients under 70 years old (P<0.05) .

Orthopedic inpatients and elderly patients, especially those with hip fracture, pelvic fracture and thoracolumbar fracture, show high incidence of nutritional risks. Therefore, the nutritional support for orthopedic inpatients should be further standardized.

Hospital, orthopedics; Nutrition survey; Nutritional risk screen 2002; Nutritional risk; Malnutrition