Background: The Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) is a popular tool for assessing the nutritional status of the elderly. MNA has a short form version comprised of the first 6 questions of the long form MNA for screening risk of malnutrition. Replacement of BMI with expanded scores of mid-arm circumference and calf circumference has been shown to improve the predictive ability of the tool.
Objective: This study attempted to determine whether replacing CC for BMI in short form could also improve the predictive activity of the tool.
Method: The study employed a purposive sampling and recruited 297 consecutive elderly subjects who attended an area hospital for health examination during the summer of 2008. Subjects who agreed to participate in the study were interviewed with a structure questionnaire for eliciting personal data and answers to questions in the MNA. Biochemical data were obtained from their laboratory reports. Subject's nutritional status was evaluated with three (the original and two modified) versions of the MNA and two modified long form versions. Results were analyzed with Friedman Test, Wilcoxon Signed-rank Test and Spearman's correlation. Receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC AUC) was used to analyze the agreement between the results of the short form versions and of the long-form versions.
Results: The original short form version graded significantly greater proportions of elderly at risk of malnutrition than the two modified versions. The two modified versions graded similar proportions of elderly at risk of malnutrition. Overall, the short form T-2 version has the best predictive ability among the three versions. Conclusion: Short form MNA-T2 appears to have the best predictive ability among the three short form versions. MNA-T2 has the advantage of not requiring weight and height measurements for calculation BMI. The version presumable can improve the work efficiency of the primary care workers because patients nutritional risk screening can be completed more quickly. Thus, the tool has the potential to improve the job efficiency of the primary care workers. It can also help to improve the quality of life of the elderly patients.
