Simple two-part tool for screening of malnutrition

Area of Science:

• Clinical Nutrition
• Medical Diagnostics
• Patient Assessment

Background:

• Hospital malnutrition is prevalent and often underdiagnosed, impacting patient outcomes.
• Early identification of malnutrition is critical for effective nutritional intervention.
• Developing a reliable screening tool is essential for clinical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the prevalence of malnutrition in hospitalized patients at a specific center.
• To develop and validate an effective screening tool for identifying patients at risk of malnutrition.

Main Methods:

• A prospective study involving 2211 patients.
• Malnutrition assessed using Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) and combination criteria (CC).
• Comparison of SGA and CC with various malnutrition screening tests, including a two-part tool (unintentional weight loss and loss of subcutaneous fat).

Main Results:

• SGA identified 11.0% and CC identified 15.6% of patients as malnourished.
• The combination of unintentional weight loss and loss of subcutaneous fat showed high accuracy (93% for SGA, 82.9% for CC).
• Negative predictive values for this tool were also high (95.5% for SGA, 87.3% for CC).

Conclusions:

• A simple two-part nutritional screening tool (unintentional weight loss and loss of subcutaneous fat) is valuable for identifying malnutrition.
• This tool demonstrates effectiveness in identifying malnutrition based on SGA and CC criteria.
• Further validation of this screening tool at other institutions is recommended.