Objective To evaluate the nutritional status of elderly inpatients by using the nutritional risk screening table 2002(NRS2002)and the short-form mini-nutritional assessment(MNA-SF),and to eval-uate the applicability of the two tools.Methods The general data were collected from the inpatients aged ≥80 years old by the random sampling method.They were divided into the two age groups:≥90 years old and<90 years old,and their nutritional status was assessed by using the two nutritional screening tools.Meanwhile,the fasting venous blood nutritional related indicators including albumin(Alb),hemoglobin(Hb),C-reactive protein(CRP),transferrin(TRF),prealbumin(PA)and retinol-binding protein(RBP)levels were detected.Furthermore the results conducted the correlation analysis.Results There were 404 cases(48.56%)of nutri-tional risk in the NRS2002 evaluation.The occurrence rate of nutritional risk in the ≥90 years old group was higher than that in the<90 years old group(P<0.01).There were 616 cases(74.04%)of malnutrition/risk of malnutrition in the MNA-SF evaluation.The incidence rate of malnutrition risk in the≥90 years old group was higher than that in the<90 years old group(P<0.01).With the serum ALB<30 g/L as the ref-erence standard,the applicabilities were compared between the two kinds of nutritional screening tools,the re-sults found that the two kinds of nutritional screening tools all were suitable for the nutritional status screen-ing of elderly inpatients.The area under the receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve(AUC)of the MNA-SF for evaluating the nutritional status in the elderly inpatients was 0.814,the sensitivity and specificity were 75.7%and 87.7%respectively.AUC of ROC in NRS2002 for evaluating the nutritional status in the elderly inpatients was 0.805,the sensitivity and specificity were 88.6%and 62.2%respectively.The correla-tion analysis results of Hb,CRP,PA,RBP and TRF biochemical indexes with MNA-SF score and NRS2002 score showed that NRS2002 score and MNA-SF score were correlated with PA,RBP and TRF.Conclusion The incidence rate of nutritional risk in elderly inpatients is high.Both NRS2002 and MNF-SF nutritional screening tools are suitable for elderly inpatients and have high accuracy.Meanwhile,combining nutrition-related indicators to evaluate the nutritional status of elderly patients can improve the accuracy of nutritional assessment.