[Analysis of three methods of nutritional screening in oncologic patients].

BACKGROUND

malnutrition is one of the complications that appears most frequently in oncological patients and causes serious consequences such as loss of lean mass.

OBJECTIVE

to know which nutritional screening method is most useful in predicting the loss of lean mass in cancer patients.

METHODS

a descriptive study was carried out evaluating three methods of nutritional screening, Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST), Malnutrition Universal Screening (MUST) and Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS-2002), in oncological patients undergoing radiotherapy treatment. Each method was analyzed by ROC curves with AUC calculation.

RESULTS

loss of lean mass is present in 48.73% of the patients. Of them, 29.44% present a loss of lean mass between 0-2%; 10.66% of patients, between 2-5%; and 8.13% of patients present a loss of lean mass > 5%. The results show that when taking a loss of lean mass > 5% as a cut-off point, the MST method has a higher AUC than the one presented by the MUST and the NRS-2002 (0.596, CI: 0.444-0.747), with significant statistics (p = 0.041). In addition, it presents high sensitivity and positive and negative predictive value.

CONCLUSIONS

MST is a more valid nutritional screening method than MUST and NRS-2002 to predict the loss of lean mass > 5% in oncological patients undergoing radiotherapy treatment. Its routine use is recommended in patients under radiotherapy treatment.