Evaluation of the nutritional status of older hospitalised geriatric patients: a comparative analysis of a Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) version and the Nutritional Risk Screening (NRS 2002)

Background The present study aimed to evaluate a short‐form (MNA‐SF) version of the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), in which some of the items were operationalised, based on scores from tools used for a comprehensive geriatric assessment, as a method for analysing the nutritional status of hospitalised geriatric patients. We compared this MNA‐SF version with the corresponding MNA long‐form (MNA‐LF) and Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002) in terms of completion rate, prevalence and agreement regarding malnutrition and/or the risk of this. Methods In total, 201 patients aged ≥65 years who were hospitalised in geriatric wards were included in this analysis. Results The MNA‐SF, MNA‐LF and NRS 2002 were completed in 98.0%, 95.5% and 99.5% of patients (P = 0.06), respectively. The MNA‐SF, MNA‐LF and NRS 2002 categorised 93.4%, 91.1% and 66.0% of patients as being malnourished or at risk of being malnourished (P