Nutritional screening tool for critically ill children: a systematic review.

Area of Science:

• Pediatric critical care medicine
• Clinical nutrition
• Evidence-based practice

Background:

• Nutritional screening tools (NSTs) identify patients at risk of nutritional status (NS) deterioration.
• Existing NSTs are designed for hospitalized children but not specifically for Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) patients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and critically appraise the development, application, and validation of NSTs for hospitalized children.
• To assess the suitability of current NSTs for PICU patients.

Main Methods:

• A systematic review of studies on NSTs in hospitalized children was conducted.
• Searches were performed across multiple databases (PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, SciELO, LILACS, Google Scholar) up to December 2020.
• Suitability for PICU patients was assessed based on relevant variables for this population.

Main Results:

• 103 studies involving 19 identified NSTs were included.
• 13 NSTs aimed to predict NS deterioration; 5 were applied in PICU settings but none were validated for this population.
• Existing NSTs lack crucial clinical, NS, laboratory, and dietary variables relevant to PICU patients.

Conclusions:

• Current NSTs are not suitable for critically ill children in the PICU.
• There is a need to develop and validate a new NST specifically for the PICU population.