Resumo

HENRIQUEZ PEREZ, Gladys; DE PAOLI, Ingrid Rached; SANCHEZ, Arelis  e  MONTILLA, María E.. Nutritional assessment: anthropometry vs. clínical judgment. An Venez Nutr [online]. 2003, vol.16, n.2, pp.61-67. ISSN 0798-0752.

The objectives of this research were to establish the concordances between the nutritional diagnosis by «clinical judgment» and the anthropometric nutritional diagnosis, and to determine the relation between the clinical signs of the undernourishment degree. The study group was formed by 50 by undernourished children of both sexes between 2 and 6 years. Each patient was classified through «clinical judgment» by two independent examiners in mild or moderate undernourishment, applying WHO methodology classification. Later, the anthropometric classification was made according to the indicator combination method. Concordance, Kappa, and Chi-square were applied. The overall concordance between the anthropometric and clinical diagnosis was very similar for both examiners: 82.0% for the first and 84.0% for the second, with Kappa values of 0.61 and 0.65, respectively. According to undernourishment levels, the concordance was 90.3% in mild undernourished for both examiners and 68.4% for examiner 1 and 73.7% for examiner 2 in moderate undernourished. 50.0% (n = 8) of non-concordant cases for moderate undernourishment matched individuals who were located in the cut-off point between mild and moderate undernourished according to the anthropometric classification. For both examiners, significant association was found between degree 1 muscle hypotrophy in arm, upper-arm, thorax, and abdominal wall, and also clinical diagnosis and fat mass in the back, interscapular space, and abdominal wall. The "clinical judgment" is a recommended method for the diagnosis of mild and moderate undernourishment in preschool children.

Palavras-chave : Children; anthropometric; undernourishment; clinical assessment.