Nutritional status assessment in leprous hospitalized patients in Argentina

Introduction: Leprosy is a regional problem of public health in the Argentine Republic. It has seen a continuous decrease of the prevalence in the last 10 years, with value is about 0.17/10000 citizen and the detection rate is constant about 0.10/10000 citizen. Even the death rate is low, its importance is given for the physicals, socials, permanents and the progressive disabilities that its produce if there no early diagnostic and a regular and complete treatment. The Dr. Baldomero Sommer National Hospital, that give a complete assistance to the leprosy patients either to the pavilion patients or the ill patients that help oneselves and live in houses with their families and where it is given food assistance to promote and increase their quality of life. Objectives: Evaluate The nutritional state of the ill patients that help oneselves and live in houses with their families.Analyze the caloric and proteic brought by the institution. Material and methods: It is a transversal and descriptive study. We made a nutritional evaluation of the patients that live in each of the 4 suburb of the hospital, whom has been previously appointed by the coordinator of the zone, with the porpoise of identify the nutritional state of each one of the patients, quantify the nutritional risk, and indicate, adequate and monitories the nutritional support. The diagnostic was realized by the dietician through: anthropometric parameters (weight, height and body mass index), biochemical parameters, according to the clinical history: albumin, cholesterol, urea, hematocrito and associated illness. Results: We evaluated 219 patients of 246, with a middle age of 56.4 years, 62.2% males and 57.8% females. We detected that obesity was the nutritional disorder with mayor prevalence in these population (74.3%) and with mayor incidence in the moderate obesity in males and mayor incidence in severe obesity in females. The prevalence of malnourishment was 3.6% and well-nourished was 23.7%, 27 of the patients (10.9%) did not go to the nutritional evaluation. The 2.8% of the patients did not have an actual laboratory for more than 2 years. In the clinical histories, we found that the dosage of albumin in an average of 4.2 g/dl, and the 2.8% of the patients did not have any value of albumin. The values of hernatocrito and urea determinate an adequate brought of proteins in the evaluated population. Inside the nutritional diagnostic we considerate the search of diabetes (present ion the 9.7 % of the patients), dislipernia (present ion the 32.8 % of the patients, taken a level of 200 mg / dl of cholesterol), chronic renal deficiency (present in the 9.3% of the patients), and arterial hypertension (present in the 33.6 % of the patients). Conclusions: Exist a high prevalence of moderate-severe obesity in the studied population that have no coincidence with the universal literature. These data shows the necessity to adequate the caloric and proteic brought to the patients. The majority of the patients presented Dislipemia and or diabetes and or arterial hypertension. Promote the development of educational programs to better the nutritional state of the risk population, better the quality of life and reduce cardiovascular risks, using an international model that include strategies for the following of a health diet and an increase of physical activity.