The use of prealbumin as index to compare sensitivities and specificities of Nutritional Risk Screening 2002,Subjective Global Assessment, Mini Nutritional Assessment: a prospective multicenter clinical studies

Abstract

Objective To explore sensitivities and specificities of Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 ( NRS 2002),Subjective Global Assessment (SGA),and Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) in the detection of blood prealbumin level.Methods Total 126 patients were consecutively enrolled from the oncology departments of three hospitals from November,2010 to March,2011.Nutritional screenings or assessments were performed on the next morning of hospital admission by nutritionists and medical oncologists using NRS 2002,SGA,and MNA.Prealbumin ( ＜ 180 g/L) was used as the reference standard of malnutrition (undernutrition) for assessing the sensitivities/specificities of these tools.Results All 126 patients completed nutritional screening or assessment using the above three tools.The prevalence of malnutrition (undernutrition) determined by NRS 2002,SGA and MNA was 67.0％,46.2％,and 64.8％,respectively.With prealbumin in relation to clinical outcome as the reference standard,the sensitivities ofNRS 2002,SGA,and MNA were 78.2％,58.2％ and 89.1％,and the specificities were 50.0％,72.2％,and 27.8％,respectively.Conclusions Among these three tolls,NRS 2002 detects the nutrition risks,whereas SGA and MNA detect malnutrition.Since prealbumin is not an appropriate reference standard,it can not be used for the comparison among the three tools.Nevertheless,NRS 2002 reflects the clinical outcomes,and therefore is suitable for inpatients. Key words: Nutrition risk; Malnutrition; Nutritional Risk Screening 2002; Subjective Global Assessment; Mini Nutritional Assessment