Prealbumin measurement in hospitalized children with different score of Screening Tool for the Assess-ment of Malnutrition in Pediatrics and its value / 中华临床营养杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the difference of serum prealbumin in hospitalized children and its value in Screening Tool for the Assessment of Malnutrition in Pediatrics ( STAMP) in hospital-izedchildren.Methods 867hospitalizedchildrenwererecruitedfromMarch2013toApril2014in the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University .All the patients were assessed using STAMP and collected venous blood sample for measuring serum prealbumin within 24 hours after admission.All the patients were surveyed for information regarding gender , age, dietary changes, etc.and their clini-cal data and laboratory results during hospitalization collected .The patients were divided into high mal-nutrition risk group ( HMRG) and low malnutrition risk group ( LMRG) according to STAMP scores upon admission. Results There were 463 children ( 53.4%) in HMRG, and 404 in LMRG (46.6%).Compared with the LMRG, the HMRG had significantly lower serum prealbumin [ (144.7 ± 50.6) mg/L vs.(173.6 ±71.3) mg/L, t=6.795, P=0.000].After controlling for age, course of disease, white blood cell count, albumin, glutamic-oxalacetic transaminase, C-reactive protein in covariance analysis, the HMRG still had significantly lower serum prealbumin than the LMRG [ estimate ( 95% CI) 139.8 ( 134.9 -144.8 ) mg/L vs.157.9 ( 151.9 -163.8 ) mg/L, F =20.433 , P=0.000 ) .Clinical cure rates in HMRG with low serum prealbumin , HMRG with normal serum pre-albumin, LMRG with low serum prealbumin, and LMRG with normal serum prealbumin were 62.9%(95/151), 80.5% (251/312), 77.1% (27/35), and 98.1% (362/369) (χ2 =112.80, P=0.000 ) , respectively; incidences of hospital acquired infection were 21.9% ( 33/151 ) , 8.7%( 27/312 ) , 22.9% ( 8/35 ) , and 1.9% ( 7/369 ) (χ2 =63.55 , P =0.000 ) , respectively. Conclusion High malnutrtion could be distinguished more accurately using the combination of the as-sessment of malnutrition screening tools and serum prealbumin measurement .