Dear Abdallah, BMI alone is not a very good measure for assessing malnutrition in adults given that it only takes into acconut two variables, that is height and weight. its a basic rapid screening tool. it is important that you use a combitation of methods to assess individuals before your consider them to be malnourished. Use a combination of methods like BMI, body fat thickness, waist hip ratio and some clinical methods. Other handy gadgets are bioscan and BIA machines which can be used to assess other variables like % body fat, BMI, ICW, ECW giving target fat, weight and water among others. the results will clearly give or indicate whether the person in question is truly malnourished on both extremes. thanks

BMI is not a great choice of indicator for acute malnutrition in adults since it is strongly influenced by body shape (the required correction can be difficult to determine, calculate, and apply in the filed) , is difficult to measure in the elderly and the handicapped, is biased upwards by the presence of famine oedema / ascites. See: [url]http://repository.forcedmigration.org/pdf/?pid=fmo:3454[/url] for further information.