Abstract

ROA ASTIGARRAGA, María Paola Belén; VILLALBA LURAGHI, Giannina C.  and  GONZALEZ CANETE, Natalia Elizabeth. Concordance between the objective nutritional status and perceived by parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Rev. cient. cienc. salud [online]. 2023, vol.5, e5120.  Epub Oct 02, 2023. ISSN 2664-2891.  https://doi.org/10.53732/rccsalud/2023.e5120.

Introduction. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) encompasses a group of disorders that affect child development. In addition to neurological development, the nutritional aspect is one of the most affected. Sometimes this alteration goes unnoticed due to the altered perception of the nutritional status that the parents of the child have. Objective. Determine the concordance between the objective nutritional status and that perceived by parents of children with ASD who attend the Esperanza para el Autismo Association, in the city of Asunción, Paraguay, from June to September 2018. Materials and methods. observational, descriptive, cross-sectional study, non-probability sampling for convenience. 29 parents of 29 children participated. A questionnaire was used to determine eating habits. To determine the perception of the nutritional status, the Warschburger-Kröller Scale (2009) and the Children's Body Image Scale (2012) were used. Concordance between what was perceived and observed was evaluated using the Kappa Index.

Results. the male sex predominated (86%), and 23 mothers participated. The mean age of the children was 4.7 years, and the parents 36 years. 56% of the children (<5 years) presented an adequate nutritional status, while 53% of those older than 5 years presented obesity. A slight concordance was observed between the perception of the parents and the objective nutritional status.

Conclusion. nutritional education for parents of children with ASD is essential to improve the current nutritional status, and allow a perception closer to the objective.

Keywords : hypertension; blood pressure; treatment adherence and compliance; epidemiology.

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