Background: High prevalence of malnutrition along with the riskfor the development of malnutrition in hospitalised children has beenreported. However, this problem remains largely unrecognised byhealthcare workers.Aims: To determine the prevalence of malnutrition and effectivenessof STRONGkids nutritional risk screening (NRS) tool in the identificationof malnutrition risk among pediatric surgical patients.Study Design: Cross-sectional study.Methods: A total of 494 pediatric surgical patients (median age 59months, 75.8% males) were included in this prospective study conductedover 3 months. SD-scores <-2 for Body Mass Index (BMI) forage or weight-for-height (WFH) and height-for-age (HFA) were consideredto indicate acute and chronic malnutrition, respectively. TheSTRONGkids NRS tool was used to determine risk for malnutrition.Results: Malnutrition was detected in 13.4% in this group of pediatricsurgical patients. Acute malnutrition was identified in 10.1% ofpatients and more commonly in patients aged <=60 months than aged>60 months (13.4 vs. 6.6%, p=0.012). Chronic malnutrition was identifiedin 23 (4.6%) of patients with no significant difference betweenage groups. There were 7 (1.4%) children with coexistent acute andchronic malnutrition. The STRONGkids tool revealed that 35.7% ofpatients were either in the moderate or high risk group for malnutrition.Malnutrition, as revealed by anthropometric measurements, wasmore likely in the presence of gastrointestinal (26.9%, p=0.004) andinguinoscrotal/penile surgery (4.0%, p=0.031), co-morbidities affectingnutritional status (p<0.001) and inpatient admissions (p=0.014).Among patients categorized as low risk for malnutrition, there weremore outpatients than inpatients (89.3 vs. 10.7%, p<0.001) and moreelective surgery cases than emergency surgery cases (93.4 vs. 6.6%,p<0.001).Conclusion: Providing data on the prevalence of malnutrition andrisk of malnutrition in a prospectively recruited group of hospitalisedpediatric surgical patients, the data acquired in the present study emphasisethe need to raise clinician's awareness about the importanceof nutritional status assessment among hospitalised pediatric patientsand the benefits of identifying patients at the risk of nutritional depletionbefore malnutrition occurs. Our findings support the use of theSTRONGkids tool among pediatric surgical patients to identify patientsat risk for malnutrition and to increase the physician's awarenessof nutritional assessment among hospitalised patients upon admission.