Introduction:

Malnutrition in hospitalized pediatric patients continues to be a common finding and a frequent cause of increased morbidity and mortality in children.

Objective:

To describe the variation of the Z-score of the weight for age scale in hospitalized infants from September to December 2018.

Materials and Methods:

This was an observational, descriptive, cross-sectional, prospective study with an analytical component. Population: patients from 0 to 24 months hospitalized during the time period from September to December 2018. Variables: age, sex, hometown, time of exclusive breastfeeding, current feeding, complementary feeding, comorbidities, fasting, Z-socre weight at admission, Z-score, weight at dicharge, nutritional diagnosis at admission, nutritional diagnosis at discharge, discharge diagnosis, parental perception. Data analysis: SSPPv21 system, descriptive statistics. The protocol was approved by the institution's ethics committee with informed consent.

Results:

the median age was 7 months, the male sex predominated (52%), the majority came from the Central Department (87%), the median time of exclusive breastfeeding was 5 months, the median onset of complementary feeding was 6 months,with the median of hospitalization days being 4 (minimum 3 and maximum of 6), current excluside breastfeeing present in 40%, the nutritional diagnosis at admission: eutrophic in 65% and at discharge 66%, the Z-socre at admission was 0, 29 ± 0.94 and at discharge was 0.42 ± 0.87. Considering 5 days of hospitalization as a cut-off point, and analyzing their relation to the variation of the Z-score (W / A), there was no variation. The perception of the parents about the feeding of their children during hospitalization was that they eat in the same proportion as usual in 74.3%.

Conclusion:

There was no statistically significant variation in the Z-score of hospitalized patients and there was no variation in nutritional status during the hospitalization of the infants in this study. Most of the patients had a short hospital stay and were not fasting during that time.

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