SENSITIVITY AND SPECIFICITY OF CHILD ANTHROPOMETRY INDICES (WEIGHT-HEIGHT)AND MORTALITY RISK IN TODDLERS

• Main Author: M REJALI
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2001-12-01
• Series: Journal of Research in Medical Sciences
• Subjects: Anthropometric Indicators-mortality Risk, Sensitivity- Specificity
• Online Access: http://journals.mui.ac.ir/jrms/article/view/3448

<span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma"><font color="#555555">Introduction: Malnutrition is a major determinant of mortality risk in infant and children so it is important to determine the mortality of a given degree of malnutrition assassed by anthropometric indices. Two Indices that may be employed to evaluate the accuracy of a screening test are sensitivity and specificity.<br />Method: This study selected 1498 children between the years 1369 (1990) and 1371 (1992) in rural area of shahreza and followed them from birth to 1372 (1993). mode of their selection was cluster random sampling. the data of weight, hight and all deaths were recorded by a questionair. two methods centile and Z-score to evaluate the accuracy were used for analysis. The sensitivity and specificity of wt/age and wt/ht and ht/age are illustrated and compared.<br />Result: By centile method senstivity of malnutrition for 3 indicators were 75,94 and 56 percent respectively and specificity were 18,6 and 33 percent.<br />By Z-score method sensitivity were 40.4, 25 and 19.3 percent for 3 Indicators were 93.8,78.9 and 97.4 percent. <br />Discussion: Sensitivity and specificity are two indices that be employed to evaluate the accuracy of a screening test to identify children at high risk to mortality.</font></span>