Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 5, 2025
Assessment of Child Anthropometry in a Large Epidemiologic Study
Published on: February 2, 2017
Validity of a nutrition screening tool for childhood cancer
Melda Kangalgil1, Buket Meral2, Alexia J Murphy Alford3
1Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Faculty of Health Sciences, Sivas Cumhuriyet University, Sivas, Turkey.
Background:
Malnutrition in pediatric oncology patients is a serious clinical condition. There is a need for standardized nutrition screening in pediatric oncology patients, as nutrition screening can offer a simple method to identify children with cancer at risk of malnutrition. This study aimed to determine the validity of a Turkish version of nutrition screening tool for childhood cancer (SCAN) in identifying the risk of malnutrition among children with cancer.
Materials And Methods:
A cross-sectional study was conducted with 78 children with cancer admitted to the pediatric hematology-oncology unit of a university hospital. In the first stage of this study, SCAN was translated into Turkish, and in the second stage, the validity of SCAN against pediatric Subjective Global Nutritional Assessment (SGNA) and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics/American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (AND/ASPEN) malnutrition criteria were evaluated.
Results:
Patients had a median age of 8.0 years (range, 2-18 years; IQR, 5-14 years), 61.5% were male, and 60.3% were diagnosed with leukemia. According to SCAN, 53.8% had high risk of malnutrition. Validation of SCAN against pediatric SGNA showed that SCAN has a sensitivity of 97.5%, specificity of 94.5%, and accuracy of 96.1%.
Conclusion:
The risk of malnutrition is common in children with cancer. The Turkish version of the SCAN is a simple, quick, and valid tool to determine the risk of malnutrition in children with cancer. Further research is needed to understand the impact of nutrition interventions on clinical outcomes in children at risk for malnutrition based on SCAN.
