Validation of nutritional screening Malnutrition Screening Tool compared to other screening tools and the nutritional assessment in different social and health areas

Introduction: nutritional screenings are used to detect nutritional risk, allow early intervention and influence the prognosis. The Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST) is only validated in hospitalized patients and oncology outpatients. Objectives: to analyze the nutritional screening MST, Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) and Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form (MNA-sf) compared to the nutritional assessment gold standard according to socio-sanitary areas and age groups; and to assess the utility of the MST in those areas where it has not been validated. Material and methods: a total of 815 outpatient, hospitalized and institutionalized subjects were included in this study. MUST and MST screenings, and nutritional assessment were performed in all subjects. MNA-sf was also performed in subjects 65 years of age. Nutritional diagnosis was performed according to the SENPE-SEDOM consensus. Results: in the outpatient cohort, three screenings have a validity (AUC ROC) greater than 0.8 compared to nutritional assessment. In the institutionalized, the MNA-sf generates false positives and the MUST is more valid than MST (AUC ROC = 0.815 and 0.763, respectively). In hospitalized patients, there are excellent results with MUST and MST. In all socio-sanitary areas the MST obtains a better positive predictive value. By age groups, MUST and MST are valid tools. Conclusions: in our study, the MST correctly diagnoses more than 80% of the patients (S = 69.4%, E = 94.2%), and has a good reliability and validity with respect to nutritional assessment not only in hospitalized patients and oncology outpatients, where it has already been validated. In our population, the MST was found to be valid in outpatient, institutionalized and hospitalized subjects.