International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics | July-September 2016 | Vol 3 | Issue 3 Page 954 International Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics Suman RL et al. Int J Contemp Pediatr. 2016 Aug;3(3):954-959 http://www.ijpediatrics.com pISSN 2349-3283 | eISSN 2349-3291 Research Article Clinico-laboratory profile and outcome of edematous severe acute malnutrition in children aged 6 months to 5 years Rameshwar Lal Suman*, Bharat Lal Sharma, Pradeep Meena, Neeraj Kumar INTRODUCTION Globally malnutrition is the underlying cause of about 5.6 million of 10 million child deaths per year, with severe malnutrition contributing to about 1.5 million of these deaths. The nutritional status of children is the best indicator of the wellbeing of children. 1 According to National Family Health Survey-3, in India, 43% children under 5 years of age are underweight (low weight for age), 48% children under 5 years of age are stunted (low height for age) and 20% children under 5 years of age are wasted (low weight for height); 6.4% of these children are severely wasted (<-3SD).Since wasting denotes acute malnutrition, these children are said to have severe acute malnutrition or SAM. The median case fatality rate in children under 5 years is approximately 23.5% in SAM, which may reach 50% in edematous malnutrition. 2 According to NFHS -3, 20% of children under 3 years of age in Rajasthan are wasted, 34% stunted and 44% are underweight. 3 ABSTRACT Background: Malnutrition is still rampant in India. There are so many cases of edematous malnutrition present in Rajasthan. So we planned to study the Clinico-Laboratory profile And Outcome of Edematous Severe Acute Malnutrition in children aged 6 months to 5 years. Methods: An observational hospital based prospective study was conducted at Malnutrition Treatment Center (MTC), Bal Chikitsalya, RNT Medical College, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India from July 2015 to Dec 2015. We enrolled total 50 SAM children aged 6 Months to 5 years having nutritional edema with medical complications. All the enrolled cases were hospitalized, acute complications were treated and nutritional rehabilitation by WHO feeding protocol was done. Clinical, laboratory parameters and outcome of E-SAM were analyzed. Results: A total of 50 children were studied. Mean age of children was 16.54±11.05 months, 52.0% were male and 48.0% were female children, Majority of them were under <-3SD and <-4SD z-score (48.0%) followed by <-2SD and in <-1SD z-score (32.0%). Onset of edema reduction occurs on 3.22±0.91day, complete disappearance of edema occurs in 10.02±2.80 days, mean weight fall was 0.91±0.31% per day, mean length of stay in hospital was 14.93 ±4.10 days. Mean weight gain was 14.18±5.42 gm/kg/day and case fatality rate was nil. All these outcomes except weight gain were significantly associated with grade of edema (p value <.05). Conclusions: Majority of the patients they were in WHO z-score of <-3SD and <-4SD z-score but extremes are also occurring up to <-8SD z-score Pneumonia and tuberculosis are the affected co morbidities for outcome of E-SAM children. Disappearance of edema, and length of stay are little bit longer than usual WHO guideline recommendations and they had a significant association with grade of edema. Percentage of wt. fall also had association with grade of edema. Keywords: Edematous severe acute malnutrition, Malnutrition treatment center, Nutritional rehabilitation, WHO feeding protocol Department of Pediatrics, RNT Medical College, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India Received: 26 April 2016 Accepted: 04 June 2016 *Correspondence: Dr. Rameshwar Lal Suman, E-mail: sumanrl@yahoo.co.in Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2349-3291.ijcp20162372