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Value of Total Body Potassium in Assessing the Nutritional Status of Children with End‐Stage Liver Disease
Author(s) -
TROCKI ORRAWIN,
WOTTON MARITA J.,
CLEGHORN GEOFF J.,
SHEPHERD ROSS W.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2000.tb06489.x
Subject(s) - anthropometry , malnutrition , medicine , body weight , standard score , body mass index , pediatrics , weight for age , zoology , biology , mathematics , statistics
A bstract : Malnutrition is a common problem in children with end‐stage liver disease (ESLD), and accurate assessment of nutritional status is essential in managing these children. In a retrospective study, we compared nutritional assessment by anthropometry with that by body composition. We analyzed all consecutive measurements of total body potassium (TBK, n = 186 ) of children less than 3 years old with ESLD awaiting transplantation found in our database. The TBK values obtained by whole body counting of 40 K were compared with reference TBK values of healthy children. The prevalence of malnutrition, as assessed by weight (weight Z score <−2) was 28%, which was significantly lower (chi‐square test, p < 0.0001 ) than the prevalence of malnutrition (76%) assessed by TBK (<90% of expected TBK for age). These results demonstrated that body weight underestimated the nutritional deficit and stressed the importance of measuring body composition as part of assessing nutritional status of children with ESLD.