Aim The objective of this study was to determine the agreement between weight for height and mid upper arm circumference in diagnosis of severe acute malnutrition in children aged 6 to 59 months.

Material and Method It was a cross-sectional study. Research was conducted at Department of Pediatric Medicine, The Children’s Hospital and University of Child Health Sciences LahoreDuration of study was 6 months. This study involved 100 children of both genders aged between 6–59 months. These children were assessed for severe acute malnutrition which was labeled positive on weight for height <-3 and mid upper arm circumference <115 mm (figure 1). The outcome variable was agreement which was labeled if both the WHZ and MUAC were positive or negative for severe acute malnutrition. A written informed consent was obtained from parents of every child.

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Abstract OP-047 Figure 1

Measuring mid-upper arm circumference.

Results The mean age of the children was 18.3±13.2 months. There were 55 (55.0%) boys and 45 (45.0%) girls with a male to female ratio of 1.2:1. Severe acute malnutrition was diagnosed in 53 (53.0%) children on either WHZ or MUAC or both. Both the WHZ and MUAC agreed on the presence or absence of severe acute malnutrition in 65 (65.0%) children. There was fair agreement between WHZ and MUAC on severe acute malnutrition (kappa=0.236; p-value=0.018). Similar agreement was noticed across various subgroups of children based on age and gender.

Conclusions In the present study, there was significant agreement between weight for height and mid upper arm circumference in the diagnosis of severe acute malnutrition in children aged between 6 to 59 months which along with ease of measurement in outpatient department advocates the preferred use of mid upper arm circumference in the evaluation of such children in future clinical practice.