Avaliação do risco nutricional em idosos residentes na zona urbana do município de Pelotas, RS.

Abstract

The Nutrition Screening Initiative Checklist (NSI), an instrument created in the United States and validated in the American population, aims at the early identification of older persons at risk of undernutrition and in need of intervention. Objective: To verify whether the NSI checklist is a valid triage instrument for identifying nutritional risk among the elderly population of a medium-sized city in southern Brazil. Methods: The study's population was composed of 60-year-old or older individuals selected from a populationbased study. Data collection occurred at two different days: firstly, the NSI checklist was administered, and not more than 15 days later the dietary recall for the previous day (gold standard) was applied. The validity analyses were performed with sensitivity and specificity tests, as well as the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve. Results: 183 elderly subjects were studied. The prevalence of individuals at risk of undernutrition according to the gold standard was61.8% (54.6-68.9%). The sensitivity and specificity values were low for all instrument cutoffs. The area under the curve was 0.53 (IC 95%: 0.46-0.60). Conclusion: Based on the sensitivity and specificity values, the NSI checklist was not found to be a valid instrument for nutritional risk screening among the elderly living in the South of Brazil.