Comparative study of the 2007 WHO growth patterns and national references in the evaluation of nutritional status in children from 6 to 12 years of Ecuador 2023

The use of referential tables for growth monitoring and nutritional status in children and adolescents is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) entity that in 2007 published a new reference for the assessment of nutritional status in children and adolescents from 5 to 19 years. The Ministry of Public Health (MSP) of Ecuador approved these indicators for the control and compliance of its regulations. The body mass index (BMI), the size and body weight are the indicators that are frequently used for the evaluation of the nutritional status due to its easy application and low cost. The importance of growth research is that anthropometric patterns or values are developed that describe each population group, Ecuador is a country that has a lot of demographic variety, as well as different religions, cultures and ethnicities, which results in the present differences in anthropometric indicators; In Ecuador, the references for the evaluation of weight and size are the curves recommended by WHO, which according to researchers belonging to the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Equinoctial Technological University (UTE), together with Yvan Lepage, belonging to the Free University of Brussels, indicate that the "curves are public health tools to follow the development of children. Therefore, take as reference the curves of another place. And it can produce problems in decision -making, both doctors and the public health system, "also indicates that countries such as Belgium, Japan, the United Kingdom, Venezuela and Argentina have its own growth curves and these must be updated every 20 years approximately (1). The objective of this study is to analyze the level of concordance between the 2007 WHO growth patterns and national references in the evaluation of nutritional status in children from 6 to 12 years of Ecuador, in order to determine its relevance for the evaluation of nutritional status in this country. The present investigation will be raised as a retrospective, analytical and cross -sectional observational study. Children who will participate in the study will be captured from a catalog of open data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC). Schools between 6 to 12 years of the different cities of Ecuador will be included with a significant sample of 11566 schoolchildren to whom the weight/age percentillary values, size/age and BMI/age, by sex and age, will be calculated, and will be compared with the WHO curves and local references elaborated by Tarupi Wilmer et. To (1). In addition, to compare nutritional status according to the two nutritional classification criteria, concordance and Kappa index will be analyzed. The type of sampling that will be used is census because good information is required. The expected results are obtaining the level of concordance between the 2007 WHO growth patterns and national references in the evaluation of the nutritional status in children from 6 to 12 years of Ecuador, the assessment of the nutritional status from the size and weight according to the standards of the WHO 2007 and national standards.

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