Clinical application of the nutritional risk screening and nutrition assessment in hospitalized children

Objective To investigate hospitalized children's nutritional risk and malnutrition occurrence, and to provide clinical basis for nutrition support. Methods Nutritional risk screening tool STRONGkids was applied to 651 cases of hospitalized children with nutritional risk screening, and through physical measurement to assess children's nutritional status, at the same time during the patient's diagnosis, the length of time data for analysis was recorded. Results Of 651 cases of hospitalized children, 7.07% (46 cases) were of highly nutritional risk, 80.95% (527 cases) with moderate nutrition risk, and 11.98%(78 cases) were of low nutrition risk.Malnutrition rate was 22.58%, moderate malnutrition in 111 cases (17.05%), severe malnutrition in 36 cases (5.53%). The first three high risk di-seases were congenital heart disease, chronic liver disease and chronic kidney disease(χ2=21.43, P<0.01). According to the result of nutrition evaluation concluded with congenital heart disease, chronic kidney disease occurred with severe malnutrition was far higher than other diseases(χ2=16.53, P<0.05). Children with highly nutritional risk were more likely to have weight loss than the children with relatively low nutritional risk (P<0.05), and their length of hospital stay were obviously longer than the children with low or moderate nutritional risk (P<0.05). Conclusions The hospitalized children have high incidence of malnutrition, and different nutritional risks lead to different clinical outcomes.STRONGkids score method helps to evaluate nutritional risk in hospitalized children and detect malnutrition and potential deterioration, which is conducive to early comprehensive nutritional assessment and proper nutritional treatment, thus to improve their clinical outcomes. Key words: Hospitalized children; Nutrition risk screening; Nutrition assessment; STRONGkids screening