Prognostic Value of the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 Scale in Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction

BACKGROUND: The Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002) scale is a rapid and effective screening instrument that assesses nutritional risk among hospitalized patients. OBJECTIVE: The present study aimed to explore the prognostic value of the NRS-2002 scale in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) considering its uncertain role in this particular condition. METHODS: Patients with AMI included in the Retrospective Multicenter Study for Early Evaluation of Acute Chest Pain were investigated. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazards models were used to analyze the association between NRS-2002 and mortality in patients with AMI. The primary and secondary endpoints were all-cause and cardiac mortality during the follow-up period. RESULTS: A total of 2307 patients were enrolled, among whom 246 (10.7%) died within a median follow-up duration of 10.67 (8.04-14.33) months. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that patients with an NRS-2002 score of 3 or higher had poorer cumulative survival than those with an NRS-2002 score lower than 3 (P < .001). In the multivariate Cox regression analysis, patients with an NRS-2002 score of 3 or higher had more than double the risk for all-cause mortality (hazard ratio, 2.25; 95% confidence interval, 1.50-3.40; P < .001) and twice the risk for cardiac-related mortality (hazard ratio, 2.01; 95% confidence interval, 1.29-3.13; P = .002) than did patients with lower scores. CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed that the NRS-2002 screening instrument was an independent prognostic predictor for both all-cause and cardiac mortality in patients with AMI. Nutritional risk assessment based on the NRS-2002 scale may provide useful prognostic information of early nutritional risk stratification in patients with AMI.