Assessment of Nutritional Status in Children with Secondary Malnutrition Versus Children with Adequate Nutritional Status

Abstract

Rationale: Child malnutrition in developed countries is mainly due to secondary chronic diseases. We assessed the nutritional status of children with cancer compared with children with other causes of malnutrition and with a control group. Methods: We did a prospective study on 83 malnourished children hospitalized in the Pediatric Clinic I Tg.-Mures, Romania, between November 1 2010 and February 28 2011. The children were divided into three groups: group 1, children with malnutrition of different causes, 26 cases (31.32%), group 2, children with neoplastic diseases, 31 cases (37.34%), and control group 3, consisting of 26 children (31.32%) with nutritional status according to age; statistical correlations were established. Results: In study group 1 we observed a low weight 2.93 SD, in group 2-0.87 SD and -0.19 SD in the control group, with a significant p = 0.001. We got statistically significant differences in terms of height (-1.93 SD for lot 1-0.76 SD for lot 2 and -0.01 SD for group 3) with p = 0.0022, BMI body mass index (-3.22 SD in group 1, -1.63 SD in group 2, -0.57 SD in group 3) with p = 0.0001 and MUAC (-2.04 SD in group 1, -1.37 SD in group 2, 0.99 SD in group 3) with p = 0.0001; all parameters were much lower in the group with malnutrition, compared with controls. In addition, it was obeserved a good correlation, statistically significant between BMI and serum proteins in group 1, (p = 0.05) and significant correlation to both as group 1 and group 2 between the MUAC and serum albumin (p = 0.05). Conclusion: We found to be most affected nutrional status in children with malnutrition secondary to other causes than the cancer, BMI, MUAC and serum protein (albumin) better characterizing the nutritional status