Malnutrition significantly hampers wound healing processes. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) and Subjective Global Assessment (SGA) in diagnosing malnutrition and predicting wound healing in patients with diabetic foot ulcers (DFU). GLIM criteria were evaluated for sensitivity (SE), specificity (SP), positive predictive value, negative predictive value and kappa (κ) against SGA as the reference. Modified Poisson regression model and the DeLong test investigated the association between malnutrition and non-healing ulcers over 6 months. This retrospective cohort study included 398 patients with DFU, with a mean age of 66·3 ± 11·9 years. According to SGA and GLIM criteria, malnutrition rates were 50·8 % and 42·7 %, respectively. GLIM criteria showed a SE of 67·3 % (95 % CI 60·4 %, 73·7 %) and SP of 82·7 % (95 % CI 76·6 %, 87·7 %) in identifying malnutrition, with a positive predictive value of 80·0 % and a negative predictive value of 71·1 % (κ = 0·50) compared with SGA. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that malnutrition, as assessed by SGA, was an independent risk factor for non-healing (relative risk (RR) 1·84, 95 % CI 1·45, 2·34), whereas GLIM criteria were associated with poorer ulcer healing in patients with estimated glomerular filtration rate ≥ 60 ml/min/1·73m2 (RR: 1·46, 95 % CI 1·10, 1·94). SGA demonstrated a superior area under the receiver's operating characteristic curve for predicting non-healing compared with GLIM criteria (0·70 (0·65-0·75) v. 0·63 (0·58-0·65), P < 0·01). These findings suggest that both nutritional assessment tools effectively identify patients with DFU at increased risk, with SGA showing superior performance in predicting non-healing ulcers.
Keywords: Diabetes; Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition; Nutritional assessment; Subjective Global Assessment; Wound healing.