Malnutrition significantly reduces the living quality of pediatric cancer patients and increases the risk of postoperative infections. Addressing this issue through early nutritional screening and intervention for children at risk of malnutrition is crucial to prevent malnutrition and its associated complications. In China the prevalence of malnutrition among pediatric cancer patients is relatively high and multiple factors such as tumor type stage and the individual variability of treatment regimens increase the complexity of determining whether a child with cancer is malnourished. Currently most studies use scales from other countries making it difficult to standardize and compare results across different scales. Therefore there is an urgent need to develop a set of targeted nutritional screening scales that are applicable to Chinese pediatric cancer patients. This paper compares the similarities and differences between the current domestic and international pediatric nutritional screening scales regarding their screening purpose populations content scoring criteria applications limitations and effectiveness. This paper further summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each scale proposes improvements to existing scales and offers recommendations for developing a nutritional screening scale tailored for pediatric cancer patients in China aimed at advancing the establishment and application of nutritional screening scales for pediatric cancer patients in the country.