Related Experiment Video
Updated: Dec 22, 2025
'Boden Food Plate': Novel Interactive Web-based Method for the Assessment of Dietary Intake
Published on: September 18, 2018
Assessment of Two Nutritional Screening Tools in Hospitalized Children
David Pérez-Solís1, Elene Larrea-Tamayo2, Cristina Menéndez-Arias3
1Pediatrics, Hospital Universitario San Agustín, 33401 Avilés, Asturias, Spain.
Insights
The Screening Tool for the Assessment of Malnutrition in Pediatrics (STAMP) and STRONGkids tool show moderate agreement in identifying pediatric malnutrition risk. While both tools effectively identify undernourished children, their low specificity requires further investigation.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Nutrition
- Clinical Assessment Tools
- Malnutrition Screening
Background:
- Accurate nutritional risk assessment is crucial for pediatric inpatients.
- Screening Tool for the Assessment of Malnutrition in Pediatrics (STAMP) and Screening Tool for Risk On Nutritional status and Growth (STRONGkids) are commonly used.
- Evaluating their validity and concordance is essential for clinical practice.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the validity and concordance of STAMP and STRONGkids.
- To assess their effectiveness in identifying nutritional risk in pediatric inpatients.
Main Methods:
- A prospective, longitudinal, observational, multicenter study.
- Inclusion of children aged 1 month and older admitted as inpatients.
- Application of STAMP and STRONGkids within 72 hours of admission, with follow-up anthropometric measurements at 12-18 months.
Main Results:
- Moderate agreement (κ = 0.47) was observed between STAMP and STRONGkids.
- Both tools demonstrated 100% sensitivity for identifying undernourished patients but had specificity below 50%.
- STAMP showed a higher tendency to classify patients as high risk compared to STRONGkids.
Conclusions:
- STAMP and STRONGkids exhibit moderate agreement and high sensitivity but low specificity for diagnosing pediatric undernutrition.
- Further research is needed on the cost-effectiveness of these screening tools and associated nutritional interventions.
Aim:
to evaluate validity and concordance of Screening Tool for the Assessment of Malnutrition in Pediatrics (STAMP) and Screening Tool for Risk On Nutritional status and Growth (STRONGkids) screening tools for assessment of nutritional risk in pediatric inpatients.
Methods:
Prospective longitudinal observational multicenter study in children aged 1 month or older admitted as inpatients. Weight, height, cause of admission, demographic data, length of stay, and nutritional interventions were recorded. STAMP and STRONGkids were applied within the first 72 h of admission. Anthropometric measurements were recorded again 12-18 months after admission.
Results:
Eighty-one patients with median age of 4.1 years completed the study. Agreement between tools was moderate (κ = 0.47). STAMP had a greater tendency to classify patients as high risk (12.3% vs. 2.5%). Both tools showed very weak correlation with height for age. All undernourished patients at the beginning and the end of the study were classified as medium or high risk by STAMP and STRONGkids (100% sensitivity), although specificity was below 50% in all cases. There were no differences in length of stay based on nutritional risk with any of the tools.
Conclusions:
STAMP and STRONGkids demonstrated moderate agreement, with high sensitivity but low specificity for the diagnosis of undernutrition. Further studies are required to analyze cost-effectiveness of these tools and nutritional interventions derived from them.
