Study of relationship between nutritional status and duration of hospitalization in the children under 2 years old with gostroenterities

Numerous studies indicate that diarrhea is more common in persons suffering from malnutrition, because malnutrition causes infection and infection leads to diarrhea which in turn it is a notorious defective cycle. Regarding the high prevalence of gastroenteritis, especially in less than 2 years old children, and relatively high prevalence of malnutrition in children in developing countries that cause impacted high expenses on government and families, because of long term hospitalization of children, this research was carried out to study relationship between nutritional status of children with gastroenteritis and their duration of hospitalization in Khorramabad Shahid Madani hospital in 2007. In this cross- sectional study, 100 children under 2 years old with gastroenteritis were investigated. They were divided into groups of 50 including "well nourished" and "mal nourished", then the duration of hospitalization in both groups was compared. Nutritional status of the children was measured by dividing their weight by their 50% of standard weight for their ages. Children with birth interval from previous child more than 2 years, birth weight over 2500 grams, mothers’ age range of 20-35 years, lack of hospitalization during the last 6 months were selected. Data were collected using questionnaire. The effect of the other likely interfering variables, with 95 percent of confidence interval, were determined. A significant relation between mean time of hospitalization (in terms of day)and nutritional status of the children was observed (P<0.001) mean time of hospitalization in well nourished group was 2.58 days, however in mal nourished group it was 3.86 days. Among interfering variables, only exclusive breast feeding showed a significant effect on the duration of hospitalization (P=0.001). Most of the children suffering from gastroenteritis were between 7-12 months of age. Mean age of mal nourished children was 8.96 months, while for well nourished children it was 10.18 months. According to our results, malnutrition leads to a significant increase in duration of hospitalization in children suffering from gastroenteritis disease.