Psychometric testing of the 'Graz Malnutrition Screening Tool' (GMS) - Validity, Reliability, Sensitivity & Specificity

Background Despite high prevalence rates of malnutrition in hospitals, awareness of medical and nursing staff is still rather low [1]. The implementation of valid malnutrition screening tools within preexisting electronic data source systems seems mandatory. Hospitals are in need of an easy to handle, valid and reliable malnutrition screening tool with high sensitivity and specificity for all kind of adult patient groups. The GMS was developed by a multidisciplinary nutrition team of the University Hospital Graz (Austria). It is primarily based on the ESPEN recommendations [2] and consists of five items shown in table 1. To individualize for special needs of older patients, age was introduced as independent risk factor.