Nutritional Screening Tool for In-Hospital Patients

ABSTRACT

Malnutrition is a common problem in hospital settings. A poor nutritional status has been associated with higher rates of infection, poor wound healing, longer hospital stays, and higher hospital costs. Therefore, early recognition and timely treatment of malnutrition is vital. To identify malnourished individuals or those at risk of becoming malnourished, selecting and validated a uniform screening tool is clearly an important issue. Both the Nutritional Risk Screening-2002 (NRS-2002) and Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) are recommended by the European Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ESPEN) for a hospital setting. For older patients, the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is the recommended tool. Short Nutrition Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ) and Malnutrition Screening Tools (MST) are brief and simple screening tools that use self-reported queries of variables that include weight loss and poor appetite. On the other hand, many of those require considerable time and labor to administer and may not be highly applicable to a Korean population. In Korea, most hospitals use a computerized nutritional screening system with a self-developed nutrition screening index. The variables for the tools, which are based on each hospital setting, include the objective data available in the patient's medical records and limited information collected from the nursing admission questionnaire. The application of different tools hampers any comparison of the malnutrition prevalence between different settings and patients groups. In addition, the absence of a widely accepted malnutrition screening tool hinders both effective recognition and the treatment of malnutrition. Therefore, the development of uniform and valid screening tools and effective nutritional support programs for Korean malnourished patients is needed.