Comparative analysis of nutrition disorder assessment and diagnosis in cancer patients

Rationale: The Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) recommends nutritional risk screening to be done before the assessment, diagnosis and grading of malnutrition severity. Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) and Patient Generated-Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) Short Form are two validated screening tools commonly performed in oncology settings. However, the agreement between GLIM criteria and the above mentioned screening tools is yet to be fully established. Methods: A total of 110 cancer patients were enrolled and assessed for malnutrition according to the GLIM criteria. For all patients MUST and PG-SGA Short Form nutritional screening, and PG-SGA assessment were performed as well. The concordance of the considered nutritional screening and assessment tools with the GLIM criteria for malnutrition diagnosis (score ≥1) were evaluated by calculating the sensibility, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, the concordance through Cohen’s Kappa, and the exact Fisher test. Results: Compared to PG-SGA SF and PG-SGA, MUST with a threshold ≥1, has the best combination of Sensitivity and Specificity, expressed by an AUC = 0.912 (K = 0.819). Conclusion: MUST with a threshold ≥1 has shown a higher agreement with GLIM criteria than PG-SGA SF and PG-SGA. Disclosure of Interest: None declared