Estudio comparativo de los patrones de crecimiento OMS 2007 y referencias nacionales en la evaluación del estado nutricional en niños de 6 a 12 años del Ecuador 2023

Abstract

"The objective of this work was to analyze the level of agreement between the WHO 2007 growth patterns and national references in the evaluation of nutritional status in children from 6 to 12 years of age in Ecuador. Materials and Methods: Observational, retrospective, descriptive cross-sectional study. The sample for the research was obtained from an open database of the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INEC) made up of a population of 2540 schoolchildren from 6 to 12 years old belonging to the cities of the different provinces of Ecuador, the data were taken of age, city of birth, weight and height, to establish the anthropometric indicators weight for age (P/E), height for age (T/E) and Body Mass Index (BMI) for each of the models to be compared. In the statistical analysis, the average and standard deviation for the anthropometric measurements were calculated and for the comparison between the groups of women and men, the T-means test of independent samples will be carried out. In addition, percentage frequency tables were generated for the variables of nutritional status and height according to WHO 2007 reference and national reference and will be compared through Pearson's Chi square test of independence, considering p < 0.05 significant; In addition, 95% confidence intervals were calculated for both proportions and means. To compare nutritional status according to the two national classification criteria and WHO 2007, agreement was analyzed using the Kappa index. Results: The anthropometric characteristics of the weight and height values by age of the sample showed that there is no difference between the two sexes; Regarding nutritional diagnosis according to the reference of the World Health Organization compared to the national reference, overweight decreases by 3.5%, and in normal nutritional status by 12.9%; a comparison that increases morbid obesity by 7.1%, obesity by 0.7%, thinness by 6.7%, and severe thinness by 1.9%, finally when comparing the two evaluation models a Kappa index of 0.53 equivalent to moderate agreement. Conclusion: The analysis revealed that, when applying national references, the prevalence of obesity and morbid obesity is considerably higher than when using WHO references. In particular, 10-year-old boys and 12-year-old girls showed a notable increase in these diagnoses. This difference suggests that national references are more appropriate for the population studied, providing a more accurate assessment of the nutritional status of children in this region."