Complementarity of nutritional screening tools to GLIM criteria on malnutrition diagnosis in hospitalised patients: A secondary analysis of a longitudinal study.

Background & Aims: The Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) proposed a two-step approach for the malnutrition diagnosis: screening to identify "at risk" patients by any validated nutritional screening tool (NST), followed by a detailed nutritional assessment for diagnosis and grading the severity of malnutrition. Since there are several validated NST, this study aimed to evaluate the complementarity of five NST to GLIM criteria for malnutrition diagnosis in a sample of hospitalized patients.

Methods: A secondary analysis of a longitudinal study. Data collection occurred within 48 h of hospital admission and included clinical, sociodemographic and nutritional data. We applied five tools for nutritional risk (NR) screening: Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), Nutritional Risk in Emergency-2017 (NRE-2017), Nutritional Risk Screening - 2002 (NRS-2002), and Short Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ). GLIM criteria were applied to malnutrition diagnosis considering all five criteria. Patients were followed up until discharge to assess hospital length of stay (LOS) and in-hospital mortality and contacted six months post-discharge to assess hospital readmission and death. We calculated the sensitivity, specificity, predictive positive and negative values (PPV and NPV), and kappa. We grouped patients according to NR and malnutrition status in four categories [i.e. NR(+)/GLIM(+)] and investigated their associations with the clinical outcomes in regression models adjusted to the Charlson Comorbidity Index.

Results: Among the 601 patients included (55.8 ± 14.8 years, 51.4% males), 41.6% were malnourished by GLIM criteria. The frequency of NR ranged from 24.0% (NRE-2017) to 35.8% (NRS-2002). MUST had the highest sensitivity (73.6%), NPV (83.6%) and PPV (93.4%). All NST presented specificity higher than 90%, except NRS-2002. The accuracy of NST ranged from 76.3% (SNAQ) to 86.8% (MUST). NR (+)/GLIM (+) by NRE-2017, MST, and MUST increased the risk of in-hospital mortality (HR ranged from 5.34 to 10.10). NR (+)/GLIM (+) increased the odds of LOS ≥10 days (RR between 2.11 and 3.01), readmission (RR between 1.51 and 1.80), and mortality six months after discharge (RR between 3.91 and 5.12), regardless of the NST applied.

Conclusion: MUST presented the highest metrics of accuracy in comparison to GLIM criteria and was an independent predictor of worse clinical outcomes when nutritional risk was combined to malnutrition diagnosis. So, risk screening by MUST is suggested as the first step of the GLIM approach.