Prevalence of malnutrition comparing NRS2002, MUST, and PG-SGA with the GLIM criteria in adults with cancer: A multi-center study

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic capacity of the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS2002), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), and Patient-generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) in light of the Global Leader Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) criteria in adult patients with cancer.

Methods: A multicenter observational study was conducted. Nutritional screening and assessment were performed at the time of admission to hospitals with the NRS2002, MUST, PG-SGA, and GLIM criteria. Sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, positive and negative likelihood ratio, and Kappa (K) values were used to evaluate the performance of these tools.

Results: Of the 637 included patients, 24.8% and 15.4% of patients were at moderate and high risk of malnutrition, respectively, using the NRS2002 and MUST. The NRS2002 was better correlated to the GLIM criteria with a higher value of Kappa (K = 0.823 vs. 0.596) and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (K = 0.896 vs. 0.757) than the MUST. Meanwhile, 28.3% of patients were diagnosed as malnourished at the time of admission per the GLIM criteria, and 43.3% were malnourished per the PG-SGA. The PG-SGA had a fair agreement with the GLIM criteria (K = 0.453), revealing a positive predictive value of 52.9% and negative predictive value of 90.6%.

Conclusions: The NRS2002 was better correlated with the GLIM diagnostic criteria of malnutrition than the MUST. The PG-SGA was too sensitive to detect nutrition-related deteriorations, leading to a low positive predictive value in the malnutrition diagnosis. Thus, the GLIM criteria could be used to confirm the presence of malnutrition identified by the PG-SGA in adults with cancer.

Keywords: Cancer; Diagnostic criteria; Malnutrition; Nutrition assessment; Screening.