COMPARISON OF THE MAIN NUTRITIONAL SCREENING TOOLS USED IN ADULT ONCOLOGY PATIENTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and malnutrition is a frequent complication among oncology patients, being associated with worse prognosis, higher treatment toxicity, longer hospital stay and reduced quality of life. Nutritional screening enables early identification of patients at risk and guides comprehensive nutritional assessment. This study aimed to compare the main nutritional screening tools used in adult oncology patients: Malnutrition Screening Tool (MST), Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST), Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002), NUTRISCORE and Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment Short Form (PG-SGA SF). This is a systematic literature review with a qualitative and descriptive-analytical approach, conducted according to PRISMA 2020 recommendations. The search was performed on September 20, 2026, in PubMed/MEDLINE, considering publications from the previous ten years, human studies and adult population. A total of 493 records were retrieved; after title and abstract screening, 22 full-text articles were assessed and 16 studies were included. The studies comprised 8,269 participants and evaluated different care settings, cancer types, treatments and reference standards. NRS-2002 was the most frequently investigated tool and showed the most consistent association with clinical outcomes, especially in hospital and surgical settings. PG-SGA SF demonstrated good performance in outpatient care and included nutrition impact symptoms. MST stood out for its speed and simplicity, but showed variable sensitivity. MUST showed high specificity and intermediate sensitivity, whereas NUTRISCORE, although oncology-specific, presented heterogeneous performance in external validations. It is concluded that no tool was superior in all settings, and the choice should depend on care context, screening purpose and reference standard used.