Dietary intake assessed by the Nutrition Screening Initiative Level II Screen is a sensitive but not a specific indicator of nutrition risk in older adults.

摘要

A study was conducted to compare the food group intakes assessed from questions embedded in the Nutrition Screening Initiative Level II Screen (NSI LII) with those from a more comprehensive food frequency questionnaires (FFQ). Free-living older ( >60 years) men (n=84) and women (n=105) were recruited from a rural Pennsylvania (USA) health maintenance organization database. In general, the sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value of the LII embedded FFQ questions indicate that there would be considerable misclassification of those not at nutrition risk as determined by food intake measures and to a lesser extent those at nutrition risk. It is concluded that the NSI is an important public health strategy for identifying older adults with compromised nutrition and health outcomes. The LII is clearly a feasible, low-cost tool to screen for nutrition risk in older adults. However, the embedded food group questions in the LII should be interpreted judiciously in the overall screening process.