Nutritional Medicine

• Meal planning for all patients on a daily basis based on diet order, diagnosis and patient’s food preferences.
• Νutritional assessment upon physician’s request. The clinical dietitian fills out the Nutritional Assessment Form in the patient’s medical record.
• Patient education upon discharge: Explanation of the diet – dietary principles, ways to change and improve habits, written materials, written sample menus.
• Meal planning for modified diets such as pureed and tube feeding.
• Outpatient follow up which includes body composition analysis and diet instructions based on food habits and impending disease.

Eating correctly plays a very important part in therapy, rehabilitation and good health conservation.
The dieticians of HYGEIA Hospital, members of the patients’ care team, ensure that patients’ diets during their stay cover their nutritional needs, according to their state of health and course of condition.

The nutritional care offered by HYGEIA Hospital dieticians as part of their greater therapeutic treatment includes:

• Patient nutritional evaluation
• Day-to-day choice of individual dietary programs for every hospitalized patient
• Nutritional consultation and patient education, when their condition requires special dietary care

 
Nutritional treatment
Even though many patients follow a regular diet during their hospital stay, some of them must follow a specially designed therapeutic diet based on their state of health.

Regular Diet
It covers patient nutritional needs that do not need to follow a specialized diet and is designed based on World Health Organization (W.H.O) recommendations:

• Choosing a variety of foods
• Maintaining a healthy body weight
• Choosing a diet which is poor in fat and especially, saturated fat, cholesterol and trans fatty acids
• Choosing a diet which is rich in vegetables, fruit and wholegrain foods
• Choosing non-fat or low-fat dairy products
• Choosing non-fat meat, such as chicken without the skin and fish
• Moderate use of salt and sugar

Therapeutic Diets
They are appropriate for patients with specific conditions, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, nephropathy, hepatopathy, gastroenteric system, surgical cases etc.

Nutritional support
It includes enteral and parenteral nutritional support for patients whose health condition does not allow the intake of food from the mouth or the patients whose nutritional needs are not completely covered and the use of food supplements is deemed necessary.

Nutritional training after hospitalization
Patients required to follow a special therapeutic diet after their stay in hospital, receive oral and written instructions from the HYGEIA Hospital dieticians.
A healthy nutrition is considered necessary to secure the well-being of patients, both in body and mind, as well as preventing and slowing disease development.