Nutrition Screening Tools

Isn't it a lovely feeling to find exactly what you need when you're not actively looking for it? And equally sweet to unexpectedly find something you thought you'd lost? Last Friday, I was browsing the Table of Contents of the latest (August 2008) Nutrition in Clinical Practice, not looking for anything in particular, and was thrilled to find several articles on nutrition risk screening -- just what I need to complete my contribution to the interdisciplinary acute stroke pathway. Then, yesterday afternoon I wrote a post with links to online articles -- and clicked on "cancel" instead of "save & close". Oh no! I thought I lost the entire post. Today, I was delighted and surprised to see it reappear!  I think from now on, though,  I may write some of my rough drafts on paper.....

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Last week I discovered recently-published articles on nutrition screening that will help me complete the nutrition appendix for a new acute stroke care clinical pathway.

Before you begin clicking on the links I've listed below, I should let you know that to read some of the full-text articles, you will need a personal, or institutional subscription (fortunately, I have the latter). The abstracts are all free to read online, though.

The reference list begins with the key review article and continues with links to the six tools the article describes:

Nutrition screening tools for hospitalized patients  Nutr Clin Pract 2008; 23, 373.

The Tools:

• MUST The development, validity and reliability of a nutrition screening tool based on the recommendations of the British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (BAPEN)  (free full-text PDF article)

• MNA The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) and its use in grading the nutritional status of elderly patients

• NRS 2002 Nutritional Risk Screening (NFS 2002): a new method based on analysis of controlled clinical trials (free full-text PDF article)

• SNAQ Development and validation of a hospital screening tool for malnutrition: the short nutritional assessment questionnaire (SNAQ) (free full-text PDF article)

• MST Development of a valid and reliable malnutrition screening tool for adult acute care hospital patients

• SGA (Subjective Global Assessment)  {original article}  {review articles 1. 2.}