Letter to the editor concerning the article: reflections on a seminal article on malnutrition published in the British Journal of Nutrition, 2004

Abstract

authors talk about usefulness of the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST).Concerning this tool and its usefulness, we acknowledge the great impact it has had worldwide. However, we think that referring to MUST as a "screening" tool is conceptually inappropriate if we accept WHO's description of screening, which requires the use of presymptomatic parameters 1 , 2 . The application of anthropometric variables, such as loss of weight in the last 3-6 months or body mass index (BMI), implies arriving late to identifying the problem and would more accurately refer to diagnosis, rather than screening, of malnutrition that has been for a long time present and has already harmed the patient. Moreover, this tool operates both with objective and subjective parameters.