Objective: Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form is a malnutrition screening scale that evaluates the patient from different perspectives and is thought to be used in frailty screening. The present study aimed to evaluate the reliability of Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form for frailty screening by using 2 frailty scales.

Methods: It was a cross-sectional study that included patients admitted to the geriatric medicine outpatient clinic of a university hospital. Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form was performed on all patients. The FRAIL Scale and Clinical Frailty Scale were used as reference frailty scales.

Results: While 62.2% (n = 61) of the 98 participants were female, the median age was 72 (interquartile range: 10.0). The FRAIL Scale (Spearman rho: −0.64, P < .001) and Clinical Frailty Scale (Spearman rho: −0.55, P < .001) were both correlated inversely and moderately with Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form. For both frailty scales, Mini Nutritional Assessment- Short Form cut-off for frailty identification was 11 (for FRAIL Scale, sensitivity: 68.00%, specificity: 87.67%, area under the curve: 0.83, P < .001; for Clinical Frailty Scale, sensitivity: 76.47%, specificity: 83.95%, area under the curve: 0.84, P < .001), and the cut-off was 13 for robust and pre-frail/frail identification (for FRAIL Scale, sensitivity: 71.70%, specificity: 73.33%, area under the curve: 0.80, P < .001; for Clinical Frailty Scale, sensitivity: 71.74%, specificity: 67.31%, area under the curve: 0.74, P < .001).

Conclusion: For quick evaluation of frailty and nutritional status concurrently, Mini Nutritional Assessment-Short Form may be an appropriate option.

Keywords: Frail elderly, frailty, malnutrition