Evaluating the DETERMINE your nutritional health checklist and the mini nutritional assessment as tools to identify nutritional problems in elderly Europeans

Objective: To evaluate two short questionnaires for assessing the nutritional situation of elderly people, the DETERMINE Your Nutritional Health Checklist of the Nutrition Screening Initiative (NSI checklist) and the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA), by comparing equivalent cumulative scores with data on dietary intake, anthropometrics and blood biochemistries. Design: Information similar to the questions of the NSI and MNA lists was collected by SENECA: the Survey in Europe on Nutrition and the Elderly, a Concerted Action. Subjects: Records collected in 1993, could be used from 1161 European elderly men and women born between 1913 and 1918, mostly community dwelling, whose diet, lifestyle and health were studied twice, in 1989 and 1993. Results: The MNA classified 55% of the examinees as well-nourished, 44% as at risk of malnutrition and 1% as malnourished. The NSI categorised the elderly people differently: 11% as good, 41% at moderate nutritional risk, 48% at high nutritional risk. Biochemical, dietary and anthropometric indices did not differ either between NSI categories or between MNA categories. Using serum albumin values (< 30 g/l) and lymphocyte counts (< 1500/ml) as standards, specificity and sensitivity of both instruments for identifying at-risk groups were below 0.6. Only with body weight loss (≥ 10%) as criterion variable were higher sensitivities (0.75 (NSI), 0.96 (MNA)) and specificities (0.54 (NSI), 0.60 (MNA)) found. Conclusion: It is concluded that in an apparently healthy elderly population both assessment tools are of limited value.