Validity of the Translated Turkish Version of the Tool for Nutrition Risk Screening for Paediatric Cancer.
Buket Meral, Melda Kangalgil, Erol Erduran
PMID 42412396WHAT IT FOUND
In Turkish children with cancer, the six-item NRS-PC identified malnutrition risk compared with dietitian assessment.
A score of 2 or more was best: 96.8% sensitivity, 57.6% specificity. Nurses can use it to trigger dietitian referral.
Key findings
01The Turkish NRS-PC had an AUC of 0.90 against the SGNA and 0.87 against the SCAN.
02Against the SGNA, a NRS-PC cut-off score of 2 had 96.8% sensitivity, 57.6% specificity, a PPV of 68.2% and an NPV of 95.0%.
03In the analysed sample, 48.4% of children were classified as moderately or severely malnourished by SGNA.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Single-centre study with convenience sampling, so results may not generalise to other Turkish paediatric oncology settings. Children in intensive care, with unstable circulation, or for whom measurements were not possible were excluded, so the tool was not tested in those groups. The design was cross-sectional, so it did not follow children over time to see how NRS-PC scores change during treatment or predict outcomes. The tool was compared with SGNA and SCAN, not with body composition measures or objective outcomes such as infection, prognosis, length of stay, or healthcare use. The authors did not test whether nurses find the tool feasible or acceptable in routine practice.
Declared interests
The authors report no funding and no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the 100% sensitivity at a score of 1 as evidence that the tool should be used at that threshold in practice. At score 1, specificity was only 24.2%, so many well-nourished children would be referred for unnecessary assessment, and the study did not test whether screening changes patient outcomes.