Association of nutritional screening tools with 6-month outcomes in ischemic stroke patients: A retrospective study

Nutritional screening tools based on laboratory examinations are relatively objective and available indicators. However, few studies investigated whether malnutrition severity was associated with adverse outcomes at the platform recovery period of 6–month and differentiated in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients with or without Intravenous Thrombolysis (IVT). Therefore, we aimed to assess the association between malnutrition and 6–month outcomes in both IVT and non–IVT patients. We retrospectively recruited 138 AIS patients who received intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) and 311 without receiving IVT. The geriatric nutritional risk index (GNRI), prognostic nutritional index (PNI) and controlling nutritional status (CONUT) were used to assess nutritional status. The concordance between three malnutrition screening tools was investigated with the Kappa test. Subgroups analyzes were conducted to assess the correlation between malnutrition and functional outcomes in IVT and non–IVT patients. 17 (6.44%) patients were in malnutrition as stated by GNRI, PNI and CONUT jointly. Moderate–severe malnutrition evaluated by GNRI was significantly associated with poor functional outcome (OR 4.074, p = 0.003). Patients in good functional outcome group (mRS scores of 0–2) had higher proportion of IVT treatment (32.79% vs 21.25%, p = 0.043). Furthermore, Subgroup analyzes showed no significant interactions between malnourished levels and IVT treatment (p–interaction > 0.05). GNRI within 24 hours provided timely signals to improve AIS patients’ nutritional status compared with PNI and CONUT. Besides, the nutritional status might not lead to the different 6–month outcomes of whether receiving IVT treatment or not.