Prediction of growth failure in children young under a year old
Mardones-Restat, F.; Jones de Mardones, G.
Boletin de la Oficina Sanitaria Panamericana. Pan American Sanitary Bureau 103(5): 450-462
1987
ISSN/ISBN: 0030-0632 PMID: 2964245 Document Number: 289150
Research carried out in Santiago, Chile, showed that primary prevention of deficient weight gains during infancy required evaluation of the likelihood of this unwanted outcome in individual children. In this regard, the risk approach has proven useful for developing predictive tools with scoring curves based on relative risk, derived from both individual and group susceptibilities and exposure levels to adverse conditions. This study presents the results of the monitoring from birth to one year of age of 1 151 infants both during January 1982 at five maternity hospitals of the National Health System of the Metropolitan Area, and evaluates the synergistic effects of various variables pertaining to the mother and the child with the level of child growth deficiencies. The results of using these variables in both the simple relative risk technique and the logistic regression procedure were compared, and the latter was found to be more effective. Most of the children (876) were followed for a year, the remaining 275 being followed for 90 days. The risk factors are the predictive tool utilized by the simple relative risk method, and they permit two curves to be plotted: biomedical risk (which considers birth weight, birth order, age and parity of the mother, and diseases of the mother and newborn), and family incompetence (which takes into account parental occupation, mother's education, the quality and sanitary conditions of housing, and the degree of use of the health services). The point where both curves intersect forms the farea that indicates the risk of growth deficiency. Use of the predictive tool for each age studied (from 0 to 90 days and 91 to 36 days) permits preventive actions to be taken. It is felt that improvement in the risk scores found for the users of the health services will depend on changes not only in the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the population, but also in the characteristics of services. It is also noted that these characteristics will vary in different areas of the country, and consequently it may be necessary to replace some of the indicators used in this study.