Nutritional profile of children attending a well-child outpatients clinic attached to the rural hospital of Llay-Llay, 1995-2001

Abstract

A group of 390 children controlled from birth to 5 years were followed up in the outpatient clinic of the Llay-Llay hospital in order to 1) describe the children according to their birth weight for gestational age; 2) to compare the nutritional status at birth with those at 1, 3 and 5 years; 3) to compare the nutritional status of all children in the study group between 1 and 5 years of age. The children were classified at birth using the normal curve of intrauterine development as, small for gestational age (SGA) for weights below the 10th centile, normal for gestational age (NGA) for weights between the 10th and 80th centile, and big for gestational age (BGA) for those above the 90th centile. Because the BGA group was small it was combined with the NGA group. For the nutritional status Minsal norms (1993) were used. At birth the distribution was 16.9% SGA, 78.5% NGA and 4.6% BGA. At the first year of age the nutritional status of SGA children differs significantly from those born NGA. In children of the same age, in those born with SGA 25.8% had a nutritional deficit as compared with 8.1% in the NGA group, which was maintained at 3 years (7.6% vs 3.7%) and 5 years (4.5% vs 0.9%). The percentage of obese children at 1 year was 10.6% in the SGA group and 19.6% in the NGA group. At 3 and 5 years, 30.1% and 43.5% of children were obese. It is concerning the high rate of children with excess weight. This is a warning for the health team to be alert and to take the necessary decisions to control the over weight pre-school children thus preventing the risks of obesity in adolescents and adults.