A comparison of two malnutrition screening tools in acute medical inpatients and validation of a screening tool among adult Indigenous Australian patients

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The objectives of this study were to identify and validate a screening tool to detect malnutrition among Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian patients. Methods and Study Design: This study included medical patients admitted into three regional hospitals in Australia. A literature review was undertaken of current screening tools before the Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST) and the newly developed Adult Nutrition Tool (ANT) were used to validate a screening tool for use among participants against the Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) tool. The sensitivity and specificity of both the MST and ANT were determined for all study participants as well as according to p..