Objective To study the differences of nutritional status in maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients assessed by Subjective Global Assessment (SGA), Malnutrition Inflammation Score (MIS) and Mini Nutritional Assessment-Simple Form (MNA-SF). Methods SGA, MIS and MNA-SF were used to assess the nutritional status in 120 MHD patients, and correlations were analyzed among the results from the 3 methods. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to study the sensitivity and specificity of the 3 methods for the evaluation of malnutrition status. Results A strong correlation existed among SGA, MIS and MNA-SF (P＜0.01). Area under the ROC curve of MNA-SF and MIS was 0.342 and 0.689, respectively, for malnutrition diagnosed by SGA score of ＜25. When the MIS score was >6.5, the sensitivity (70.00%) and specificity (61.70%) was highest. Conclusion MIS is similar to SGA for malnutritional assessment in MHD patients. MNA-SF is unsuitable for this purpose, neither for the assessment in elderly (age ≥60 years) MHD patients.