Nutrition Risk Screening in Intensive Care Units: Agreement Between NUTRIC and NRS 2002 Tools

BACKGROUND: The American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition recommends nutrition screening in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and indicates the use of 2 tools: Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS 2002) or Nutrition Risk in the Critically Ill (NUTRIC). This study aims to compare nutrition risk detected by NRS 2002 and NUTRIC to identify whether both tools are equivalent for clinical practice in the ICU. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in 2 hospital centers in the south of Brazil. Adult patients (≥18 years old) who stayed in the ICU for >24 hours were included. NUTRIC and NRS 2002 were compared with each other for their agreement in screening for nutrition risk. RESULTS: The study included 208 patients, most of them male (63.5%). The comparison between both nutrition screening tools showed fair agreement (κ = 0.39). Nearly half of the patients were classified at high nutrition risk by NUTRIC (47.6%), whereas only approximately one-third of the sample was classified similarly by NRS 2002 (35.6%). CONCLUSION: Despite the ability to identify patients with high nutrition risk, NUTRIC and NRS 2002 performed differently and were not concordant, suggesting that are not equivalent for clinical practice in the ICU.