Evaluation of malnutrition development risk in hospitalized children.
Abstract
Objectives:Many screening methods, such as the Screening Tool Risk on Nutritional Status and Growth(STRONGkids) and the Pediatric Yorkhill Malnutrition Score (PYMS), have been developed to detect mal-nutrition in pediatric patients. We aimed to explore the prevalence of malnutrition risk in hospitalizedchildren via symptoms and identification of contributing factors, and to examine the efficacy of malnu-trition screening tools for hospitalized children.Methods:STRONGkids and PYMS were applied to 1513 inpatients at 37 hospitals in 26 cities from dif-ferent regions of Turkey. Physical measurements were collected at hospital admission and at discharge.z-Scores of height-for-age, weight-for-age, weight-for-height, and body mass index–for–age were calculated.Results:Overall, 1513 patients were included in the study. A body mass index standard deviation scoreof less than−2 was present in 9.5% of the study population at hospital admission, whereas 11.2% of theparticipants had a weight-for-length/height score of less than−2 at hospital admission. According toSTRONGkids results, the proportion of the patients with an underlying chronic disease was higher forthe patients at high risk of malnutrition than for the patients at medium or low risk (91% compared with47% or 45%, respectively). PYMS results indicated that patients at high risk of malnutrition have morechronic diseases (75%) than the patients at medium or low risk of malnutrition (55% and 44%, respectively).Conclusions:Use of anthropometric measurements in addition to screening tools to identify hospital mal-nutrition (such as PYMS, STRONGkids) will prevent some nutritional risk patients from being overlooked