Introduction:

malnutrition in the pediatric population has been associated with a great number of physiological problems and complications, which lead to a longer period of hospitalization, a higher risk of infections, a rise in mortality rate, and hence, a rise in assistance expenses.

Objective:

to collect available evidence on tools of nutritional screening frequently used in pediatrics that allow identifying, preventing and intervening hospital malnutrition, as well as providing guidelines regarding the appropriate application instant.

Materials and methods:

a systematic review of literature was carried out in accordance with the PRISMA Declaration (Preferred Reporting Items in Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) and in the main databases, search in ClinicalTrials and gray literature in Open Gray and TRIP Database. Then, the articles were selected and classified depending on the type of study. The quality assessment was done in accordance with the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) checklists.

Results:

one hundred and ten articles were identified, following the parameters of the PRISMA declaration. Twenty-one articles were analyzed and evaluated through the SIGN methodology; 19 met the high quality criteria and were included in the present review. Six nutritional screening tools in pediatrics were identified, STRONGkids being the tool referred by 63% of the studies for the detection of malnutrition risk.

Conclusions:

the present systematic review allowed us to conclude that STRONGkids is the best screening tool for hospitalized children since it is practical, quick, easy to use and it reliably predicts the risk of malnutrition. However, further studies are required to validate the use of this in the Colombian context.

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