Abstract

COSTA, Cristiana; MATOS, Clara; CANDIDO, Cristina  and  GASPAR, Eurico. Assessment of nutritional risk and characterization of nutritional status of hospitalized children. Acta Port Nutr [online]. 2017, n.10, pp.18-22. ISSN 2183-5985.  https://doi.org/10.21011/apn.2017.1004.

Introduction: The children admitted to the hospital present a high risk of developing malnutrition, especially those who already have an illness. Thus, nutritional risk screening, when applied early and in time, allows the health professional to make an appropriate nutritional approach, preventing or correcting malnutrition, as well as complications resulting from changes in nutritional status. Objectives: To identify the nutritional risk and to characterize the nutritional status of hospitalized children. Methodology: We conducted a cross-sectional study, from 25th May to 23rd June of 2015, including 63 children, aged 1 to 17 completed years. The STRONGkids screening tool was applied and height and weight were measured in order to calculate of Body Mass Index. Standard deviation scores (z-scores) of weight-for-height, height-for-age, weight-for-age and Body Mass Index were calculated and compared to World Health Organization’s recommended cut-offs, in order to assess the existence of malnutrition and to characterize the nutritional condition at the moment of admission into hospital. Results: The malnutrition screening showed that 58.7% of the children were at medium risk, 3.2% at high risk of malnutrition, and only 7.7% were in fact malnourished. Prevalence of thinness was 1.6%, while 65.1% children were eutrophic and 33.3% had overweight/ obesity. Conclusions: Nutritional condition doesn’t always have a direct correlation with the actual nutritional risk. Effectively, at the moment of hospitalization, the nutritional condition of the child might not yet be affected, even if there is a high risk of malnutrition. Thus, screening is necessary and crucial to the surveillance of the nutritional condition of patients with a high malnutrition risk.

Keywords : Anthropometrics; Children; Malnutrition; Nutritional status; STRONGkids.

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