Complementarity of nutrition risk screening tools with malnutrition diagnosis in patients with cancer: A 12‐month follow‐up study assessing accuracy metrics and mortality

BACKGROUND: The Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria for diagnosing malnutrition were established to provide a standardized approach for diagnosing malnutrition in clinical practice using a nutrition screening tool (NST) as the first step for this process. This study aimed to compare the complementarity of NSTs with the GLIM criteria for malnutrition diagnosis in patients with cancer. METHODS: Hospitalized patients with different cancer types were evaluated in a prospective cohort study in which they were initially screened using the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA), Protocol for Nutritional Risk in Oncology (PRONTO), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool, Nutritional Risk Screening 2002, Malnutrition Screening Tool, and NutriScore for nutrition risk. Malnutrition diagnosis involved phenotypic and etiological criteria as proposed by the GLIM. Complementarity of NST to GLIM criteria was evaluated by calculating accuracy metrics and investigating association with 12-month mortality. RESULTS: Nutrition risk ranged from 14.8% (NutriScore) to 82.8% (PRONTO) and frequency of malnutrition from 13.8% (with NutriScore) to 88.9% (with PG-SGA). NutriScore presented the lowest negative predictive value (25.1%) whereas PG-SGA presented the highest (58.32%). Regardless of the NST applied, the risk of malnutrition and diagnosis of malnutrition according to the GLIM criteria, combined or isolated, increased the risk of 12-month mortality. CONCLUSION: All NSTs presented low negative predictive value when their complementarity to GLIM criteria for malnutrition diagnosis was tested. Indeed, patients "at risk" presented similar increased risk of 12-month after discharge mortality in comparison with those at risk and malnourished by the GLIM criteria when all NSTs were applied.