Cure8 research brief
Malnutrition is common in IBD, worsens outcomes, and is inconsistently managed. A standardized, implementable pathway could help detect and treat malnutrition earlier and make access to nutrition care more consistent across regions.
Clinicians and IBD care teams; clinical nutrition specialists; hospital administrators and service planners; adult IBD patients and caregivers.
This paper describes the Italian PONTE project, which used Lean A3 methods to design a standardized, implementable pathway for nutritional care of people with IBD.
The pathway includes routine nutritional-risk screening, diagnostic assessment using GLIM criteria, assignment of a nutrition referent, graded management with referral to Clinical Nutrition, education for professionals and patients, digital documentation, and performance indicators.
The project identified fragmented screening, unclear professional responsibilities, and regional disparities in access to nutrition services as major gaps in current IBD care in Italy.
The proposed Lean-based pathway is intended to make screening and referral more consistent and equitable and to provide measurable indicators to support implementation and evaluation.
This report presents the pathway design and rationale rather than outcomes from a prospective implementation; it provides a reproducible framework for centers or health systems planning to improve nutritional care for IBD.
This paper outlines the design and proposed Lean-based pathway (project-level/abstract); it does not present prospective implementation results or patient outcome data. Implementation will need local adaptation and evaluation.
Review the original publication for the complete reporting, methods, and context.
Conflict statement: Declaration of competing interest The research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
This Cure8 brief is based on source text from the linked article. Cure8 is informational only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
Standard measures like BMI and routine labs can miss muscle and fat depletion in IBD patients. Better screening plus access to dietitian assessment could find treatable malnutrition that affects recovery and quality of...
Malnutrition is common in IBD and worsens clinical course and quality of life. Better screening and assessment can identify people who need nutritional support.
The study shows malnutrition is common in Crohn’s disease and much more likely during active inflammation, highlighting the need for routine nutritional screening and more than one type of assessment.
