Survival in critically ill pediatric surgical patients with elevated PYMS and caloric deficit
Abstract Introduction: The nutritional counseling of the critical surgical pediatric patient is complex, it requires nutritional monitoring tools to improve their survival. The Pediatric Yorkhill Malnutrition Score (PYMS) is highly valid for determining nutritional risk. In Cuba there are no comparative studies on survival and PYMS. Objective: To determine survival in pediatric surgical patients with high PYMS and caloric deficit. Methods: An observational, prospective, cross-sectional and survival study was carried out in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Octavio de la Concepción de la Pedraja Pediatric Hospital, Holguín, Cuba, in the period from January 2018 to January 2019. analyzed 21 demographic and nutritional variables. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used for the bivariate variables. Kaplan Mier survival curves and ROC curves were created to determine optimal cut-off points for mortality. Results: All patients who did not survive presented high PYMS (p = 0.001) log Rank: X2 10.5, the patients with better caloric adequacy had better survival (p = 0.513) log Rank: X2 0.428 but without statistical significance. The area under the curve to determine mortality according to the PYMS score was higher (0.891) than caloric deficit (0.468) with a sensitivity of 1 and a specificity of 0.66. Conclusions: The survival of critical surgical pediatric patients with high PYMS and caloric deficit was determined. The non-survivors of the study had an elevated PYMS. The PYMS score is a better predictor of mortality than the caloric deficit. Demonstrating its excellent utility in advising nutritional risk in pediatric intensive care.