title: [Validation of a nutritional screening tool for hospitalized pediatric patients].
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Malnutrition among hospitalized patients has clinical implications, and interest has arisen to find screening tools able to identify subjects under risk. At present, there is no consensus about the most suitable nutrition screening tool for pediatric patients.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To validate STAMP (Screening Tool for the Assessment of Malnutrition in Pediatrics) pediatric screening tool in Spain.
  
  
  METHODS
  Descriptive cross-sectional study of patients admitted to a 3rd level children's hospital with both medical and surgical specialities. During the first 24 hours of admission, STAMP screening tool was applied. For its validation, results were compared with those obtained from a nutritional assessment performed by specialist staff, which included clinical, anthropometric and body composition data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A sample of 250 children was studied. Nutritional assessment identified 64 patients (25.6%) under risk, 40 of whom were malnourished (16%). STAMP classified 48.4% of the patients as being under nutritional risk. This tool showed 75% sensitivity and 60.8% specificity when identifying patients under risk according to nutritional assessment. It showed 90% sensitivity and 59.5% specificity when identifying malnourished patients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Malnutrition was less frequent than that reported in other European countries, although diagnosis technique was different. STAMP is a simple and useful tool for nutritional screening, avoiding the need to assess all patients on admission in order to identify those under nutritional risk.
authors.affiliation: Unidad de Nutrición Infantil y Enfermedades Metabólicas, Hospital Universitario La Paz, Madrid, España. rlama.hulp@salud.madrid.org
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Lama More
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Moráis López
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Herrero Álvarez
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Caraballo Chicano
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Galera Martínez
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: López Ruzafa
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rodríguez Martínez
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: de la Mano Hernández
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Rivero de la Rosa
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000886:Anthropometry; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D009752:Nutritional Status; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012306:Risk; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology