Desarrollo de una estrategia de prevención de malnutrición infantil fundamentada en la evaluación estandarizada a través de métodos de antropometría y bioimpedancia

Abstract

Introduction: The increase in weight has occurred in recent decades at an increasing rate affecting individuals regardless of sex, ethnicity, age, or socioeconomic status; overweight and obesity are defined as an excessive increase in body adiposity, which in turn is related to a wide spectrum of chronic noncommunicable diseases that generate a great overload in health systems. Objective: To develop a strategy for prevention of child malnutrition based on standardized assessment through anthropometry and bioimpedance methods. Methodology: a descriptive, prospective, and longitudinal research is developed, based on a theoretical systematization of nutritional processes in the infant's age group. Results: It is necessary to have early diagnostic instruments that present a low technical complexity and reduced cost to evaluate the populations with the highest risk factor, thus reducing the progression of the disease and the establishment of complications, specifically in the child, the body mass index is an instrument that presents limitations to evaluate the percentage of body fat, to be complemented with the evaluation of body composition by electrical impedance, supplements these, improving their diagnostic capabilities. Conclusions: The strategy for the prevention of overweight and obesity designed, based on the analysis of body composition by electrical impedance in school-age children, taking into account that this diagnostic method allows to know the components of the human body and express it in percentages, in the same way it is possible to locate children with excess adiposity even when the body mass index determines a state of normality in the subjects evaluated