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Deaths of severely malnourished children: identifying those most at risk |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Severe malnutrition is responsible for the deaths of millions of children every year. Research published in PLoS Medicine has shown that certain clinical signs in severely malnourished children can predict those who are most likely to die. This should help health care workers focus their attentions on those who are most at risk. The international group of researchers work in a hospital in Kilifi District Hospital in Kenya, where 920 children were admitted with severe malnutrition between Septemb er 2000 and June 2002. Although the children were treated according to guidelines from the World Health Organization, 176 of them (19%) died. The WHO says that use of the guidelines can reduce the death rate to around 5%, but the Kilifi figures are not unusual for Africa. The researchers proposed that these findings (together with a number of other features that were associated with the later deaths) could be used to identify three groups of patients differing in their need for emergency care: a high-risk group (with any of the four signs above, or with low blood sugar, among whom mortality was 34%); a moderate-risk group (among whom mortality was 23%); and a low-risk group (mortality 7%).
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