Background and objective:
Some conditions are considered sensitive to primary health care (PHC) as nutritional deficiencies, and it is an indicator of access and the quality of care offered in the PHC. This study aimed to describe malnutrition hospitalizations in Brazilian older adults and to verify the temporal evolution of hospitalizations in the five regions.

Methods:
This is a descriptive and ecological study of time series, based on secondary data obtained from the System of Health Indicators and Monitoring of Older Adults Policies (SISAP-Older adults). We used data referring to 2000 to 2019 regarding hospitalizations due to nutritional deficiencies considered avoidable that include the categories E40-E46 and E50-E64 of ICD-10, in men and women aged 60 to 74 years in five Brazilian regions. Data were analyzed descriptively using the software Microsoft Excel®.

Results:
There were 232,592 malnutrition hospitalizations in Brazilian older adults between 2000 and 2019, and we observed a decrease of 44.6% in the number of hospitalizations. The Southeast and Northeast regions had the highest number of hospitalizations, corresponding to 46.5% and 30.2%, respectively. The North region showed an increase of 16.6% in the number of hospitalizations, while the Center-West region showed a reduction of 52.7%. Regarding gender, 59.5% of hospitalizations were male. The Southeast region concentrated the highest number of hospitalizations for both sexes, 43.3% of women and 48.7% of men. A greater reduction was observed in women’s hospitalization in the Northeast region (-58.5%) and men in the Midwest region (-52.2%).

Conclusion:
A tendency to decrease malnutrition hospitalizations was observed in Brazilian older adults. Although, health actions are needed to strengthen food and nutritional surveillance in primary health care to reduce the risk of hospitalization in the older population.