NUTRITIONAL ASSESSMENT OF SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN WITH FUNCTIONAL CONSTIPATION
Elkhashab EK, El Kholy HE, Awad YM and El Barbary AM
PEDIATRIC DEPARTMENT, FACULTY OF MEDICINE, AIN SHAMS UNIVERSITY
ABSTRACT
Background: Nutrition assessment can identify medical complications that affect nutritional status, track growth and weight trends, detect diet habits that make it difficult to improve health or that increase the risk of disease, inform nutrition messages and counseling as well as establish a framework for an individual nutrition care plan, which specifies nutrition goals and interventions, feasible changes in behavior and practices to meet those goals.
Aim of the work: This study was conducted to assess the dietary intake, anthropometric measurements and body mass composition among school age children complaining of functional constipation to evaluate their nutritional status. 
Patients and methods:This was a cross-sectional case control study, conducted in Pediatrics hospital, Ain Shams university. The study included thirty Egyptian school age children with age range between 5 to 12 years old who were diagnosed as having functional constipation according to Rome III criteria as well as thirty age and sex matched apparently healthy controls. All patients and controls were subjected to history taking, detailed history about shape and consistency of stool using Bristol score, nutrient dietary history by 24 hours recall, thorough clinical examination as well as Anthropometric data. A Z-score is a numerical measurement of a value's relationship to the mean in a group of values.
Results: The mean daily consumption of water among cases was much lower than that of the controls and the difference is statistically highly significant. In our study, the lower mean consumption of the protein, fibers and fat were observed among cases with hard consistent stool and the higher mean consumption were observed among those with soft stool but the difference was statistically significant only for the fat consumption. The correlations between different food items consumption, motion frequency and Bristol score proved that, the only significant positive correlations were observed between the fiber intake and Bristol score with about 47% correlation (p=0.009) and between the water intake and Bristol score by 44% correlation and p value was 0.015.
Conclusion: There was a higher water intake among controls, denoting that water intake lessens the occurrence of constipation. Fiber was related to a less consistent stool appearance in cases, with no apparent significance although there was no difference in the intake of fibers between cases and controls. Thus, we recommend higher intake of fiber for patients complaining of constipation and water intake should be advised to children, specially in our country where the hot weather and humidity are high.

BODY COMPOSITION OF SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN WITH FUNCTIONAL CONSTIPATION