Aline Cristine

Nutritional counseling to individuals with diabetes mellitus in the Primary Health Care

Introduction: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a global public health problem, and nutritional counseling is one priority strategy to control this disease. Objective: to analyze the effectiveness of individual nutritional intervention in people with DM. Method: this was an intervention study with the before and after perspectives, for 12 months, including adults and elders with destabilized DM referred for nutritional counseling in the Basic Health Unit. The intervention, based on nutritional counseling, consisted of individual sessions with an interval of 30-50 days and was analyzed by anthropometric and food intake evolution. Results: 11 overweight patients were evaluated, most women with a high prevalence of nutritional inadequacies. After the intervention, a reduction per capita in sugar (p = 0.03) and salt (p = 0.05) consumption were observed. Conclusion: The nutritional intervention showed poor results. We suggest the implementation of new intervention studies that evaluate the cost-effectiveness of an educational instrument that could be commonly used throughout the health care team in order to achieve greater effectiveness.