Nutritional global subjective evaluation: instruments for screening for hospitalized children

Abstract

Introduction: Over the past few years, several nutritional screening tools have been developed for application in hospitals. Those have, as main objective, the early identification of nutritional risk, which allow theevaluation and previous nutritional diagnosis enabling the professional to intervene before the worseningof malnutrition, preventing its consequences. The choice of a uniform and validated tool is an importantissue in the execution of nutritional screening. Objectives: To present four methods of nutritional screeningin pediatrics and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Methodology: Survey of scientific articlespublished in databases like SciElo, LILACS, PubMed and MedLine from 1995 to 2015, in English,Portuguese and Spanish. The keywords used were: “nutritional screening”, “nutritional risk”, “nutritionalassessment” and “children”. Studies on nutritional screening tools developed for children and teenagerswere included and the studies concerning adults and elderly were excluded. Those which dealt with toolsdesigned for specific diseases were also excluded. Result: Of the four nutritional screening tools studied,the Screening Tool for Risk of Impaired Nutritional Status and Growth (STRONGkids) was presented asthe easiest and most practical tool to use compared to others, and may be applied by any health professionalin the moment of the patient’s admission. Conclusion: Based on the characteristics of each screeningmethod studied might not elect the most suitable because all of them have limitations in their application.