Diagnostics & Follow-up

Diagnostics

The treatment of malnutrition starts with measuring or calculating the energy and protein need. Children need not only energy and protein for body and activity maintenance, but especially for growth. The paper Energy Need for Children and Protein Needs in Children provides information on how to determine the energy and protein needs of sick, malnourished children.

In malnourished children it is necessary to monitor dietary intake. For children from 1 year, a special dietary diary has been developed, indicating by means of icons how much a child needs to eat of certain foods. Children can paste by sticking stickers to show what they have eaten one day.

Parents play an important role in the feeding and feeding of their children during hospitalization as well as after dismissal. Therefore, proper information to parents about malnutrition and some parents is needed. This parent’s parenting leaflet provides brief information about malnutrition and provides practical tips for a good dietary intake. This example can be used to develop a personal patient folder.

Follow up

If a child with a nutritional advice goes home, it is important that the nutrition and nutritional advice are transferred properly. Important points of attention include recording weight and length in SD scores in the resignation letter. Preferably, an opinion is also given on a target weight. In some situations, reference to a dietitian in the first line is desirable. A specially developed transfer form can be used for this purpose.