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Le projet

Validation of anthropometric and clinical measures in the evaluation of the nutritional status of neurologically impaired children

Superviseurs du projet

Laboratoire ou Hôpital la majeure partie du projet se déroule

Hôpital Jeanne de Flandre, Lille and Hôpital des Enfants Reine Fabiola, Brussels

Objectif du projet

Neurologically impaired children are a population at high risk of malnutrition due to lack of communication means, swallowing difficulties and various gastrointestinal disorders associated with their neurological disease.
Through a cross sectional study, this work aims to validate several anthropometric and clinical items as markers of the nutritional status in this population.
In May 2017, the European Society for Paediatric Gastroenterology Hepatology and Nutrition (ESPGHAN) issued new recommendations for nutritional assessment and management of neurologically impaired children. They recommend measuring height-for-age, weight-for-height and body mass index in every child, and identify five warning signs of malnutrition which are skin problems and poor peripheral circulation, weight-for-age, triceps skinfold, mid-upper-arm circumference and faltering growth or failure to thrive.(1) Data concerning these factors exist but are scarce, and only deliver moderate or low grades of evidence.(2–5) Further studies are thus urgently needed to confirm the accuracy of these signs to detect malnutrition. We decided to concentrate on these items and compare them to the gold standard method of evaluation, the whole body Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan, which is also a recommendation of ESPGHAN.(1,6)

We believe that this work will help to systematize the evaluation of nutrition in neurologically impaired children, and therefore optimize the management of feeding issues, avoiding numerous expected complications that can arise from poor nutritional status.

Résumé

Nous allons mener une étude transversale qui vise à valider des critères cliniques, proposés dans les dernières recommandations de l’ESPGHAN afin d’évaluer le statut nutritionnel des enfants polyhandicapés. Ces critères seront comparés aux résultats d’un DEXA chez ces patients. L’étude sera réalisée au moyen d’un questionnaire, qui sera rempli par le médecin à la consultation de gastro-entérologie et nutrition, et concernera les enfants polyhandicapés, envoyés dans le but d’évaluer la nécessité d’un support nutritionnel, ou qui sont déjà suivis dans le cadre de ce support nutritionnel.