O uso de indicadores antropométricos na avaliação nutricional seqüencial de crianças e adolescentes gravemente doentes internados em uma unidade de terapia intensiva / The use of anthropometric indicators in the nutritional sequential assessment of critically ill children and adolescents admitted to an intensive care unit

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Despite technological progress, malnutrition is still very prevalent in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) setting. Critically ill children are at higher nutritional risk due to changes in intermediary metabolism caused by stress, which is characterized by increased basal metabolic rate and intense protein catabolism. Nutritional care studies have proposed that early intervention, targeted for nutritional assessment can prevent and minimize the complications of malnutrition. Although the anthropometric nutritional assessment (ANA) is particularly difficult to be performed in critically ill children and adolescents, the study of its effectiveness is of utmost importance for these patients. To classify infants, pre-school children, school children and adolescents according to their nutritional status, on admission and during their PICU stay, a prospective study was carried out. We evaluated 256 patients from January 2005 to January 2006, admitted to the PICU of Instituto da Criança, Hospital das Clínicas da Universidade de São Paulo. ANA was performed within the first 24 hours after admission and was repeated on a weekly basis until discharge from the PICU and included weight (W), height/length (H), arm circumference (AC), triceps skinfold (TS), arm muscle circumference (AMC) and arm muscle area (AMA). The nutritional classification was performed with the Z-score for weight/age (W/A), height/age (H/A), weight/height (W/H), body mass index/age (BMI/A), arm circumference/age (AC/A) and arm circumference/height (AC/H), adopting the reference values of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS, 2000) for children over five years, and the WHO/2006 for those under five years old. The severity of the patients condition was assessed by the score Pediatric Index of Mortality (PIM). Mean values, median and standard deviation of Z-scores were obtained for all indicators. Sequential evolution in children was performed by means of comparative analysis between admission and the seventh day of hospitalization with the paired Student t test, to identify changes in anthropometric indicators over time. Nutritional status and its correlation with severity, mortality and length of hospitalization were analyzed by linear correlation and regression, using the Pearsons coefficient and the evolution trend. The median age was 58 months and the predominant age groups were school children and those under the age of two, and 84.76% of patients had an ailment. The median period of xix hospitalization was four days and the PIM score was 10.7. There were 38 deaths (15% of cases), and malnutrition was found on admission in 37% of patients by the indicator Z H/A, 23% for Z W/A, 12.7% for Z W/H, 15.6% for Z BMI/A, 43.2% for Z AC/A , 23.8% for Z AC/H, 28.5% for TS , 43% for AMC and 43% for AMA. There were no statistically significant changes in anthropometric indices during the period of hospitalization, and there was no correlation between the PIM, the time of hospitalization and the nutritional indicators used. The indicator AC/H correlated to mortality. The results suggest that anthropometry is useful in nutritional assessment of critically ill children in the PICU setting, and the arm measurements can predict mortality and malnutrition in these patients at admission.

ASSUNTO(S)

adolescente anthropometry criança unidades de terapia intensiva pediátrica avaliação nutricional child nutritional assessment pediatric intensive care units adolescent antropometria

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