Performance of Malnutrition Screening Tools on People With Chronic Diseases: A Bivariate Meta-Analysis.
Hidayat Arifin, Ruey Chen, Chien-Mei Sung and 2 others
PMID 41627084WHAT IT FOUND
MST, MUST and NRS-2002 detected malnutrition risk reasonably well, but none strongly changed the chance of malnutrition compared with PG-SGA.
Use them to flag risk, not diagnose.
Key findings
01MST had pooled sensitivity .78 and AUC .87; MUST .74 and .79; NRS-2002 .67 and .82.
02MST had pooled specificity .82, MUST .80, and NRS-2002 .88.
03All three tools had positive likelihood ratios below 10 and negative likelihood ratios above 0.1, indicating a minimal effect on malnutrition detection.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The analysis included 26 studies, and fewer studies covered MST and MUST than NRS-2002. Some studies had unclear concern for the reference standard. No subgroup or meta-regression analysis was done, so it does not show which tool performs best by country, age, sex, or chronic disease. Several included studies had poor information clarity.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read a positive MST, MUST, or NRS-2002 result as proof of malnutrition. All three had minimal effect on detection compared with PG-SGA, so they only flag risk and require further assessment.