title: The two most popular malnutrition screening tools in the light of the new ESPEN consensus definition of the diagnostic criteria for malnutrition.
abstract: The new definition of malnutrition in adults proposed recently by The European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) changed the view on the issue and raised the question of the reliability of available diagnostic tools. Therefore, the aim of this study was to verify the accuracy of the two most commonly used screening tools by comparing their findings with the new ESPEN criteria.
  
  
  
  Nutritional screening was performed in 1146 (median age 60 years, interquartile range: 44-73 years, 617 males, 529 females) patients on admission to hospitals with two nutritional screening tools: Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002) and Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST). The screening results were then compared to the ESPEN new diagnostic criteria for malnutrition.
  
  
  
  According to the NRS2002 13.5% and 27.9% of the outpatients and hospitalized patients respectively were found to be at moderate/high risk of malnutrition. With the use of MUST 9.1% and 14.9% of the outpatients and hospitalized patients respectively were found to be at moderate/high risk of malnutrition. According to the ESPEN diagnostic criteria 6.4% and 11.3% of outpatients and hospitalized patients respectively were classified as malnourished. MUST was found to be better correlated to the latter for both outpatients (K = 0.777, p < 0.001) and hospitalized patients (K = 0.843, p < 0.001) as compared to NRS2002 (k = 0.256, p < 0.001 and k = 0.228, p < 0.001). ROC plots Area Under the Curve (AUC) was found to be higher for MUST compared to NRS2002 (0.964 vs. 0.695 for outpatients and 0.980 vs 0.686 for hospitalized patients respectively).
  
  
  
  To our knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the clinical value of a malnutrition screening tool in the light of the new ESPEN definition for malnutrition. According to our results, MUST was better correlated with ESPEN criteria for the definition of malnutrition, leading us to the conclusion that it can more efficiently identify the malnourished patients, during the screening process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Laiko General Hospital, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Kalliopi-Anna
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Poulia
authors.affiliation: Stanley Dudrick's Memorial Hospital, Skawina, Poland.
authors.forename: Stanislaw
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Klek
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
authors.forename: Ioannis
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Doundoulakis
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece.
authors.forename: Emmanouil
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bouras
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Evangelismos Hospital, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Dimitrios
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Karayiannis
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Evangelismos Hospital, Athens, Greece.
authors.forename: Aristea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Baschali
authors.affiliation: ICU, Ippokratio General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece.
authors.forename: Marili
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Passakiotou
authors.affiliation: School of Medicine, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece. Electronic address: mhourd@auth.gr.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chourdakis
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D005060:Europe; D006115:Greece / Q000453:epidemiology; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D052756:Nutritional Sciences / Q000379:methods; D009752:Nutritional Status; D010343:Patient Admission; D012306:Risk; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D012958:Societies, Scientific; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D003245:Consensus Statements as Topic
keywords: Diagnostic criteria; Disease related malnutrition; ESPEN malnutrition definition; Nutritional screening; Screening tools