Weight and Length Increases in Children after Gastrostomy Placement
Section snippets
Methodolgy
The target population of this study included every gastros-tomy-fed child under the age of 8 years attending selected outpatient clinics staffed by University of Alabama at Birmingham faculty at The Children's Hospital of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation Services, Birmingham office. The study was approved by the University of Alabama Institutional Review Board. To be eligible for the study, gastrostomy placement had to have occurred any time from birth to 6.5 years of age,
Subject Description
The target population consisted of 130 children with gastros-tomies. Of these, 75 met all the criteria of the study and are characterized in Table 2, Table 3 and FIG 1, FIG 2. In this group of 75 children, three measurements were made on 40 subjects, two measurements on 24 subjects, and one measurement on 11 subjects. None of the subjects died or was lost to the study as a result of surgical complications in the 18 months after gastrostomy placement. The age at the time of gastrostomy placement
Discussion
This repeated measures design study demonstrated that catchup growth can be achieved by means of gastrostomy placement in children who were diagnosed with FTT before gastrostomy placement. The statistical method of the two-tail paired t test was consistent with that of Patrick et al (13). Our study confirmed the literature (5), (13), (14), (15), (16) that children with developmental disabilities often experience malnutrition and growth retardation, sometimes because of their underlying
Applications
Gastrostomy placement for achieving catch-up growth reinforces the importance of medical nutrition therapy. The results of this study support the correction of FTT in developmentally delayed children, up to age 6.5 years, when adequate nutrition is provided. Although the extent of height and weight increases were related to risk factors of prematurity, ambulation, and age, the increases were significantly greater than normal growth. Registered dietitians can reassure parents who are considering
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