Elsevier

Nutrition

Volume 48, April 2018, Pages 40-47
Nutrition

Applied nutritional investigation
Evaluation of malnutrition development risk in hospitalized children

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2017.10.020Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Evaluation of the nutritional status of hospitalized children should be routinized.

  • Each hospitalized child should be evaluated by one of the scoring systems.

  • Using only one screening tool may give inaccurate results for some patients.

  • Using of anthropometric measurements may provide additional value.

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 malnutrition in pediatric patients. We aimed to explore the prevalence of malnutrition risk in hospitalized children via symptoms and identification of contributing factors, and to examine the efficacy of malnutrition screening tools for hospitalized children.

Methods

STRONGkids and PYMS were applied to 1513 inpatients at 37 hospitals in 26 cities from different 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 score of less than −2 was present in 9.5% of the study population at hospital admission, whereas 11.2% of the participants had a weight-for-length/height score of less than −2 at hospital admission. According to STRONGkids results, the proportion of the patients with an underlying chronic disease was higher for the patients at high risk of malnutrition than for the patients at medium or low risk (91% compared with 47% or 45%, respectively). PYMS results indicated that patients at high risk of malnutrition have more chronic 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 malnutrition (such as PYMS, STRONGkids) will prevent some nutritional risk patients from being overlooked.

Keywords

Hospitalized children
Malnutrition
PYMS
STRONGkids
Screening tools

Cited by (0)

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

This study was supported by Nutricia Advanced Medical Nutrition.

1

TUHAMAR Study Group: Deniz Ertem, M.D., Güniz Yaşöz, M.D., Hasan Ali Yüksekkaya, M.D., Reha Artan, M.D., Meryem Keçeli Başaran,M.D., Zerrin Önal, M.D., Mehmet Enes Coşkun, M.D., Ayşen Aydoğan, M.D., Nihal Uyar Aksu, M.D., Pelin Zorlu, M.D., Meltem Akçaboy, M.D., Mahya Sultan Tosun, M.D., Nafiye Urgancı, M.D., Reyhan Gümüştekin Kaya, M.D., Mehmet Satar, M.D., Aysel Yüce, M.D., Asuman Nur Karhan, Hasret Ayyıldız Civan, Erhun Kasırga, M.D., Burcu Volkan, M.D., Alev Cansu Certel, M.D., Ahmet Güzelçiçek, M.D., Tanju Özkan, M.D., Kaan Demirören, M.D., Sadık Akşit, M.D., Şule Gökçe, M.D., Sirmen Kızılcan, M.D., Buket Dalgıç, M.D., Zeliha Demirtaş, M.D., Adem Karbuz, M.D., Ayhan Gazi Kalaycı, M.D., Aliye Gülbahçe, M.D., Talip Sayar, M.D., Serhat Güler, M.D., Fesih Aktar, M.D., Aydan Kansu, M.D., Cansu Altuntaş, M.D., Dilfuza Ağalıoğlu, M.D., Duran Arslan, M.D., Hasan Karakurt, M.D., Soner Sazak, M.D., Alper Kaçar, M.D., Oya Baltalı Halıcıoğlu, M.D., Gülberat İnce, M.D., Gonca Üstündağ, M.D., Yasemin Dilek Soysal, M.D., Neslihan Karacabey, M.D., Nur Arslan, M.D., Yeşim Öztürk, M.D., Pınar Kuyum, M.D., Uğur Deveci, M.D., Mukadder Ayşe Selimoğlu, M.D., Fatma İlknur Varol, M.D., Burcu Güven, M.D., Güzide Doğan, M.D., Murat Çakır, M.D., Fulya Gülerman, M.D., Esra Dursun, M.D., Esin Kıyan, M.D., Ali Evrim Doğan, M.D. and Feza Kırbıyık, M.D.