Puréed diet: prevalence and reported reasons for use in a long-term care hospital.

Although puréed diets are thought to be widely used for patients in long-term care facilities, there is little specific information concerning prevalence and reasons for the actual use of this diet texture. At Saint-Vincent Hospital, a 516 bed, long-term care and rehabilitation facility, 25.9% of the chronic-care population (n = 424) were on a puréed diet. Those who received puréed diets tended to be older (83.5 years versus 75.4 years, P < 0.001) and were more likely to be female (82.7% versus 70.8% P < 0.006), than the total population of long-term care patients. A greater percentage of patients receiving a puréed diet had dementia (43.0% versus 30.6%, P < 0.02), and fewer had cerebrovascular accident as a primary diagnosis (22.6% versus 33.9%, P < 0.05), than the total population of long-term care patients at this hospital. Following data collection, reasons for patients being on a puréed diet were grouped into five categories. The most popular categories were "Physiological/Mechanical" and "Cognitive" problems.