Evaluation of nutritional risk screening-2002 and subjective global assessment for general surgery patients: a...

To investigate the reliability of nutritional risk screening (NRS-2002) and Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) tools to predict the length of hospital stay, complications and mortality, and to compare these tools in predicting outcomes of surgical patients.

The prospective study was conducted at the Surgery Department of Numune Training and Research Hospital, Adana, Turkey, from March 30 to September 30, 2010. The patients were divided into 3 groups. Group 1 included patients requiring major surgical operations for gastrointestinal malignancy; Group 2 and 3 included patients undergoing moderate surgery and minor surgical operations respectively. Discrimination characteristics of the scoring systems were evaluated using receiver operating characteristic curves.

Nutritional risk at admission was found to be increased in 132 (22.5%) patients by NRS-2002, and 90 (15.3%) by SGA. The sensitivity and specificity of NRS-2002 for complications were 53.3% and 96.6% respectively. The SGA values were 55% and 98.5% respectively. NRS-2002 and SGA at admission had a reliable power of discrimination (AUC > 0.8) for mortality and to predict complications in major gastrointestinal surgical patients.

SGA and NRS-2002 methods had positive predictive power in estimating the mortality risk in general surgical patient population. Both scoring tools were also positive in estimating post-operative complication risk in major surgical patients.