Introduction:

Malnutrition is highly prevalent in patients with chronic kidney disease and represents a modifiable prognostic factor. Its early identification is essential to guide nutritional care and prevent complications.

Objective:

To evaluate the operational performance of the iNUT Renal nutritional screening scale as part of its validation process in a group of hospitalized patients with CKD in Moniquirá, Boyacá.

Methodology:

Diagnostic validation study with a sample of 32 adult patients with CKD. The iNUT Renal and MUST scales were applied and compared with the Subjective Global Rating (GSV), considered the reference standard. Sensitivity, specificity, predictive values and area under the ROC curve (AUC) were analyzed to determine diagnostic accuracy.

Results:

72 % (n = 23) of the patients were classified as "at risk of malnutrition" by iNUT Renal, while 75 % (n = 24) of the sample was malnourished according to VGS. Operational performance evaluation showed that iNUT Renal had a sensitivity of 100 %, specificity of 82 %, positive predictive value (PPV) of 91 %, negative predictive value (NPV) of 100 % and AUC of 0.991, outperforming the MUST scale in sensitivity and diagnostic accuracy.

Conclusions:

The iNUT Renal scale proved to be a valid and highly sensitive tool for the detection of malnutrition risk in adult patients with CKD. Its implementation in clinical practice is recommended to improve early detection and nutritional intervention in this population.