Hospital malnutrition, despite its high prevalence and its negative health and financial consequences, remains underestimated. As this implies a hidden economic risk for the health system, this review aims to estimate the economic and health burden of malnutrition in hospitalized patients. For this, a literature review was carried out, which consulted the PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases, using the keywords health care costs, cost control, cost-benefit analysis, cost of disease”, “malnutrition”, “obesity”, “overweight”, “nutritional disorders”, “hospitalized patients” and “quality of life”. The PRISMA method was used for the selection of 16 articles. The analysis yielded the following findings: 1) indirect costs were not considered in most of the economic analyses; 2) costs were assessed from the perspective of nutritional interventions and not from the burden of disease; 3) there was no clear distinction between the terms costs and charges in the cost-effectiveness evaluations; 4) the cost drivers of malnutrition come from hospitalization, medications and supplements expenses, and the development of complications or comorbidities; 5) the costs of malnutrition vary according to its behavior (i.e. if it is the main disease or a comorbidity); and 6) the early introduction of nutritional therapy and the systematization of diagnostic processes allow for a reduction of its economic and health burden.
