Agreement between growth curves in children and adolescents with cerebral paralysiss

Introduction: There are a number of factors that favor the development of nutritional disorders in children with cerebral palsy, such as motor disorders and swallowing disorders. Objective: To compare the agreement of the nutritional status of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy through growth curves. Methods: Cross-sectional study of 99 patients with cerebral palsy aged 2 to 19 years old, both genders, treated at the northeast referral center, from January 2015 to January 2017. Nutritional status was assessed according to anthropometric indicators: weight for age, body mass index for age and height for age both on the World Health Organization curve 2006/2007 and on cerebral palsy curves. Agreement was measured from the weighted kappa index, and a significance level of 5% was obtained. Result: The kappa test showed significant disagreement between the indicators weight for age, body mass index for age and height for age with the following values: r = 0.008 (p = 0.001), r = 0.0038 (p = 0.001) and r = 0.028 (p = 0.001) respectively. Discussion: The study showed that evaluation methods developed and approved based on healthy population parameters tend to label patients with cerebral palsy in nutritional deficits. Conclusion: The study suggests that anthropometry and growth in children with cerebral palsy diverge from healthy children, overestimating malnutrition in individuals with cerebral palsy.