Association between the modified Nutrition Risk in Critically Ill (mNUTRIC) score and clinical outcomes in the intensive care unit: a secondary analysis of a large prospective observational study

BACKGROUND: Malnutrition in intensive care unit (ICU) patients is associated with adverse clinical outcomes. The modified nutrition risk in the critically ill score (mNUTRIC) was proposed as an appropriate nutritional assessment tool in critically ill patients, but it has not been fully demonstrated and widely used. Our study was conducted to identify the nutritional risk in ICU patients using the mNUTRIC score and explore the relationship between 28-day mortality and high mNUTRIC scores. METHODS: This study is a secondary analysis, the data were extracted from The Beijing Acute Kidney Injury Trial (BAKIT). In total, 9049 patients were admitted consecutively, and 3107 patients with complete clinical data were included in this study. We divided the study population into high nutritional risk (mNUTRIC score ≥ 5 points) and low nutritional risk (mNUTRIC score 4 for the mNUTRIC score to predict the 28-day mortality. CONCLUSIONS: Patients admitted to the ICU were at high risk of malnutrition, and a high mNUTRIC score was associated with increased ICU length of stay and higher mortality. More large prospective studies are needed to demonstrate the validity of this score. TRIAL REGISTRATION: This study was registered at www.chictr.org.cn (registration number Chi CTR-ONC-11001875 ). Registered on 14 December 2011.