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Validity of the Translated Turkish Version of the Tool for Nutrition Risk Screening for Paediatric Cancer
Buket Meral1, Melda Kangalgil2, Erol Erduran3
1Department of Child Health and Diseases Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey.
Insights
The Nutrition Risk Screening for Pediatric Cancer (NRS-PC) tool is a valid and practical method for identifying malnutrition risk in children with cancer. This screening helps improve clinical outcomes for pediatric oncology patients.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Oncology
- Clinical Nutrition
- Health Outcomes Research
Background:
- Malnutrition is prevalent in pediatric cancer patients, increasing the risk of adverse clinical outcomes.
- Effective methods for assessing malnutrition risk in this vulnerable population are needed.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the validity of the Nutrition Risk Screening for Pediatric Cancer (NRS-PC) tool in a pediatric oncology setting.
Main Methods:
- A cross-sectional study was conducted in a pediatric oncology unit.
- Nutritional risk and malnutrition were assessed using the Nutrition Screening Tool for Childhood Cancer (SCAN) and Pediatric Subjective Global Nutritional Assessment (SGNA).
- The validity of NRS-PC was assessed using Receiver-Operator Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.
Main Results:
- The prevalence of malnutrition was 48.4% among the study participants.
- NRS-PC demonstrated excellent accuracy in screening for nutritional risk, with high Area Under the Curve (AUC) values when compared to SCAN (0.87) and SGNA (0.90).
- NRS-PC showed high sensitivity (77.4%-100%) and variable specificity (24.2%-86.4%) against SGNA.
Conclusions:
- The Turkish version of the NRS-PC is a simple, valid, and practical tool for nutritional risk screening in pediatric cancer patients.
- Further research on feasibility and acceptability is recommended to identify optimal screening tools for children.
Background:
Malnutrition in paediatric cancer patients increases adverse clinical outcomes; however, methods for assessing malnutrition risk remain unclear. This study aimed to assess the validity of the Nutrition Risk Screening for Pediatric Cancer (NRS-PC).
Methods:
This cross-sectional study was conducted in the paediatric oncology unit of a tertiary care university hospital. The nutritional risk and malnutrition status were assessed by the Nutrition Screening Tool for Childhood Cancer (SCAN) and Pediatric Subjective Global Nutritional Assessment (SGNA), respectively. Receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curve method was used to evaluate the validity of NRS-PC. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values were calculated.
Results:
The median age of children was 8 years, and 60.2% were boys. The prevalence of malnutrition was 48.4%. NRS-PC had excellent accuracy compared with SCAN (AUC: 0.87, 95% CI: 0.827-0.944; p < 0.001) and SGNA (AUC: 0.90, 95% CI: 0.847-0.951; p < 0.001). Using SGNA as a reference method, the NRS-PC tool had a sensitivity of 77.4%-100% and specificity of 24.2%-86.4% according to different cut-off points.
Conclusion:
The Turkish version of the NRS-PC is a simple, valid and practical method for nutritional risk screening in the paediatric oncology population. Further feasibility and acceptability studies are needed to determine the most appropriate screening tools in children.
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