Validity of the Short Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire for Japanese Patients with Cancer Undergoing Outpatient Chemotherapy

Abstract

To investigate the utility of the Short Nutritional Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ) in the nutritional evaluation of patients with cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy. We included 229 patients with cancer who were undergoing outpatient chemotherapy between October 2015 and April 2016. The SNAQ and the revised SNAQ (addition of age and body mass index) were implemented, and their relationships with Controlling Nutritional Status (CONUT), an indicator of bionutritional assessment, were examined. The cutoff value of the SNAQ score corresponding to moderate-to-severe undernourishment in CONUT values was 0.5, with a sensitivity of 87.5% and a specificity of 65.9%, and the corresponding values for the revised SNAQ score were 2.5, 91.7%, and 62.9%, respectively. This cutoff value and the corresponding positive prediction value for the revised SNAQ were superior to those of SNAQ. Binary logistic regression analysis with the revised SNAQ and sex as independent variables and the CONUT value as the dependent variable revealed that the higher the SNAQ score, the more likely it was that CONUT moderate-to-severe undernourishment would be identified (odds ratio, 1.48;, 1.34-1.96). Nutritional evaluation with the revised SNAQ can predict moderate-to-severe undernourishment according to CONUT in patients with cancer undergoing outpatient chemotherapy. J. Med. Invest. 64: 117-121, February, 2017.