Saba Ahmed, Fehmina Arif, Dure Sameen Akram.
Psychomotor development of Malnourished versus healthy Pakistani children of up-to 6 years of age.
Pak Paed J Jan ;32(1):23-8.

Objective: To compare development of malnourished children with healthy children of same age and social background by using Denver Development Screening Test (DDST). Design: Cross-sectional, case control study. Place and duration of study: The study was undertaken in Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) in Pediatric unit –I, during the period from February 2003 to February 2004. Patients and method: Children with ages ranging from birth till 6 years were included. One hundred and twenty well-nourished children comprised the control group while 60 malnourished children formed the case group. Bio-data, nutritional and socio-economic status of both the groups were evaluated. Developmental milestone and behavior pattern of each child was checked by applying DDST using Denver manual. All the information was entered in predesigned questionnaire. Result: Malnutrition was observed more in children under three years of age (75%), with a slight female preponderance (55%). Strong association was seen between malnutrition and low socio-economic status (90%). Malnourished children showed maximum delay in Gross motor milestone (78%) followed by 60% in language, 41% in Personal social and 33 % in Fine motor. Comparison of healthy and malnourished children showed malnourished group was significantly delayed (P-value<0.001) in all milestones. Conclusion: Malnourished children were significantly delayed in all milestones however some degree of neuro physical delay was also observed in healthy children

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