LAUSR

INTRODUCTION the prevalence of undernutrition in the pediatric cancer population can vary considerably, an element that significantly influences the clinical outcome of patients. However, this is a potentially modifiable prognostic factor, which requires timely identification of nutritional risk to guide the nutritional care process. OBJECTIVES to evaluate the operational performance of the Spanish version of the nutritional screening tool for childhood cancer (SCAN) in the context of the validation process of this instrument in a high-complexity hospital in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. METHODS the methodological design for the validation of a diagnostic scale was followed. The final sample consisted of 96 patients between 0 and 17 years with cancer and hospitalized at the Children's Cancer Center of the HOMI Foundation in Bogota. The SCAN-SP was applied to each patient and a complete nutritional assessment (CNA) was performed as a gold standard to determine nutritional status. RESULTS 82.3 % (n = 79) of patients were classified "at risk of malnutrition" by SCAN-SP and 69.8 % (n = 67) of the total sample had undernutrition. The evaluation of the operative performance of SCAN-SP against CNA showed excellent results: sensitivity of 100 %, specificity of 59 %, PPV of 85 %, NPV of 100 %, positive likelihood ratio of 2.4, and negative likelihood ratio of 0. CONCLUSION the SCAN-SP scale performs well as a nutritional screening tool in pediatric cancer patients, so its use in clinical practice is recommended.