Abstract

Author(s): Moura Andrade, Maria Zilda Nery; Assis Oliveira, Clotilde; Barbosa dos Santos, Djanilson; Ribas de Farias Costa, Priscila

Background: The use of nutritional screening tools to identify nutritional risk in hospitalized children contributes to the adequate evaluation and intervention..

Objective: Evaluating the nutritional risk and associated factors in hospitalized paediatric patients through the STRONGkids.

Methods: It is a cross-sectional study including 122 both sex children and adolescents admitted in a public paediatric hospital in Bahia, Brazil, between October and November 2013. The patients were submitted to the STRONGkids screening, anthropometric and socioeconomic evaluations at the first 48 hours of the admission. The statistical analyses included the Poisson regression model and it was adopted the significance level <5%.

Results: The mean age was 61,6 months (±5.12SD), predominantly male (68%). The mean time of length of hospital stay was 8.4 days (±7.31). Malnutrition prevalence was 13.9%, according to anthropometry. The STRONGkids identified 63.1% of patients with medium or high nutritional risk. Maternal age (p=0.02), anthropometric diagnosis (p=0.01) and socioeconomic condition (p=0.02) were factors associated to the medium and high nutritional risk. Also, we identified an association between medium and high nutritional risk at the admission and a longer period of hospital stay (PR=3.27; p=0.01), which was more relevant when adjusted by socioeconomic condition (PR=4.17; p<0.01).

Conclusions: Maternal age, anthropometric diagnosis and socioeconomic condition were factors related to medium or high nutritional risk in this population. The medium or high nutritional risk at the admission was associated to a longer period of hospitalization. These are important findings that could guide the adoption of nutritional protocols to prevent hospital malnutrition.