Prevalence of malnutrition or risk in residents in long term care: comparison of four tools

The ideal tool for determination of malnutrition risk or malnutrition in long term care (LTC) is elusive. This study compares prevalence, association with resident risk factors and sensitivity (SE) and specificity (SP) of malnutrition or risk categorization in 638 residents from 32 LTC homes in Canada using four tools: the Mini-Nutritional Assessment Short Form (MNA-SF); Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA) Global Category Rating and the Pt-Global webtool; and the interRAI Long Term Care Facility undernutrition trigger. Prevalence was most common with MNA-SF (53.7%) and lowest with InterRAI (28.9%), while the PG-SGA Global Category Rating (44%) was higher than the Pt-Global webtool (33.4%). Tools were consistently associated with resident covariates with few exceptions. The PG-SGA Global Category Rating demonstrated the best sensitivity and specificity when compared to all other tools. Further work to determine the predictive validity of this tool in LTC residents is required.