E′laboration of a Tunisian pediatric risk score for hospital undernutrition: Prospective cohort study

Aim. - The aim of our study was to develop a Tunisian risk score for pediatric hospital undernutrition.Patients and methods. - We conducted a prospective study, including all children aged over 30 days hospi-talized for more than 48 hours in pediatric department, over a six-month period. Hospital undernutrition was defined as a decrease of at least 25% in z-score of weight-for-height or BMI compared to admission. We developed a risk score for pediatric hospital undernutrition.Results. - We followed 294 children with mean age of 43.6 months. The prevalence of undernutrition at admission was 25.5%. This prevalence increased at the end of the stay to 34%. The prevalence of hospital undernutrition was 28.6%. The risk factors for hospital undernutrition were: age & LE; 15 months (p = 0.007), chronic disease (p = 0.011), no breastfeeding (p = 0.048), presence of fever on admission (p = 0.040), food intake < 50% (p = 0.008), and mother- child separation (p = 0.029). A score of six items ranging from 0 to 20 was developed by assigning each risk factor its standardized coefficient. The threshold value was 4. This score was reliable (Cronbach's a = 0.9) and had a specificity of 80% and a sensitivity of 83%. Conclusion. - Our score had good psychometric properties and must be validated prospectively.& COPY; 2022 Societe fran-cophone nutrition clinique et metabolisme (SFNCM). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.