Nutrition Screening and Assessment: What’s in Your Toolbox?

This review evaluates the available tools that the clinician has to diagnose malnutrition or assess for nutritional risk and to help correct some of the misconceptions that exist in the recognition of this problem.

The paucity of uniform definitions, lack of accurate CPT codes reflective of the scope of nutritional deficiencies, lack of education regarding the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of malnutrition, and lack of validated, accurate, and accessible tools to diagnose this condition contribute to the scope of the problem of malnutrition in hospitalized patients.

The recognition of patients who are at risk for malnutrition while in the hospital remains a challenge for clinicians. Malnutrition has been demonstrated in the literature to contribute to poor outcomes, increased length of stay, increased frequency of discharge to rehabilitation centers or long-term acute cares, and increased length of time required to return to functional baseline status. It is important to know what tools are available and useful to help recognize and treat this when it is present.