Nutritional assessment of surgical patients

In order to test the sensitivity and specificity of the East Orange Nutritional Screening Form (EONSF), nutritional assessments were performed on a random sample of 10% of general medical/surgical admissions at a large midwestern veteran's administration hospital. Patients were followed until discharge to determine if they met the standard criteria of additional nutritional support. The tool correctly identified patients at nutritional risk (sensitivity) 95% of the time and patients not at nutritional risk (specificity) 89% of the time. It proved to be an effective, low-cost tool for identifying patients at risk and for planning appropriate nutritional strategies.