title: NUTRISCORE: A new nutritional screening tool for oncological outpatients.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The aim of this study was to design a new nutritional screening tool (NUTRISCORE) to detect nutritional risk in outpatients with cancer.
  
  
  METHODS
  A multicenter, cross-sectional study was conducted. We randomly selected outpatients receiving onco-specific, palliative, or symptomatic treatment for malignant neoplasms (including solid tumors and hematologic malignancies). These patients were assessed using the NUTRISCORE tool, the Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST), and the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) to detect risk for malnutrition. The new tool included questions regarding the cancer site and active treatment. Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values were calculated for NUTRISCORE and MST using the PG-SGA as a reference method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We evaluated 394 patients. According to NUTRISCORE, 22.6% were at risk for malnutrition. The MST detected a risk in 28.2%, and the PG-SGA found that 19% were malnourished or at nutritional risk. Using the PG-SGA as a reference method, the MST had a sensitivity of 84% and a specificity of 85.6%, whereas NUTRISCORE exceeded these values, at 97.3% sensitivity and 95.9% specificity. The better performance of NUTRISCORE as compared with MST was confirmed by the receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, with area under the curve values of 0.95 (95% confidence interval, 0.92-0.98) for NUTRISCORE and 0.84 (95% confidence interval, 0.79-0.89) for the MST.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  NUTRISCORE has been found to be a novel, fast, and valid nutritional screening tool for outpatients with cancer. Its simplicity and high level of accuracy in detecting nutritional risk facilitates its applicability.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Nutrition Unit, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: Larribas@iconcologia.net.
authors.forename: Lorena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Arribas
authors.affiliation: Clinical Nutrition Unit, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Hurtós
authors.affiliation: Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics Department, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria José
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Sendrós
authors.affiliation: Clinical Nutrition Unit, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Inmaculada
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Peiró
authors.affiliation: Nutrition and Dietetics Department, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), Girona, Spain.
authors.forename: Neus
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Salleras
authors.affiliation: Clinical Nutrition Unit, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Eduard
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fort
authors.affiliation: Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics Department, Institut Català d'Oncologia (ICO), Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Jose Manuel
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Sánchez-Migallón
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy / Q000009:adverse effects; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044342:Malnutrition / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D009752:Nutritional Status; D010044:Outpatient Clinics, Hospital; D010166:Palliative Care; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012306:Risk; D057566:Self Report; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013030:Spain / Q000453:epidemiology
keywords: Cancer; Nutritional screening tool; Outpatients; Sensitivity; Specificity