ASSESSMENT OF MANAGEMENT OUTCOME OF SEVERE ACUTE MALNUTRITION AND THEIR DURATION OF STAY IN WARD AT WUSTH, SOUTH WEST ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Back ground:- Malnutrition is the intake of an insufficient, surplus or disproportionate amount of energy and /or nutrients. Severe acute malnutrition affects nearly twenty million children under 5years, causing up to 1 million deaths each year by increasing susceptibility to death from severe infection. Objectives:- To assess the clinical outcome of patient managed for sever acute malnutrition and duration of stay in nutritional rehabilitation unit, wolkite University Specialized Hospital. Method:- A retrospective analysis of the hospital records on the cases of severe acute malnutrition from August 2012 to August 2014 was done. Result: Total of 169 patients charts who were admitted to NRU from August 2012 to August, 2014 were revised. Among these majority of them are in age range of 5 to 59 months(57%), followed by those who are 5 to 10 years accounting 24.9% and those who are less than 6 months are 16%. Among admitted patients the most common admission criteria was major medical complications which accounts for about 71%, followed by failed appetite test which is 22.5%,age <6 month accounts for 4.1% and grade 3 edema accounts for 2.4%. Among admitted patients 9.5%(16) of them had treatment failure and the most common cause of treatment failure is AGE which accounts for 50%(8) of treatment failure. Among admitted patients there was a total of 7 death and the most common cause of death is sepsis. Conclusion: Our finding has shown that edematous SAM is more common form of malnutrition at WUSTH. It is common in 6-59 mo male patients. There is considerable rate of treatment failure and death, 9.5% and 4.1% respectively. Majority of the cases (81%), the duration of stay in the in patient management is less than 10 days, and the rest cases are still spending longer duration (> 10 days) in hospital. So efforts should be taken to optimize the management and follow-up