Concordance between reference tables used for the diagnosis of the nutritional status in schools in rural communities

Introduction: The easiest and most economical way to observe growth is anthropometry. To measure growth, reference standards are used that evaluate the normality of growth. The growth curves recommended by the WHO until before 2006 were those of the NCHS and the CDC. As of April 2006, the WHO proposed the use of new growth pattern charts. Objective: To measure the concordance between the 2007 WHO growth reference tables and those of the 2000 NCHS / CDC using the height-for-age (T / E) and body-mass-index-for-age (BMI / E) indicators. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional analytical study. We studied 148 children between 5 and 16 years of age who attended schools in three rural communities. The variables analyzed were T / E and BMI / E, differentiated by sex. The kappa coefficient was estimated in order to evaluate the concordance between the references. The WHO Antro Plus V.1.0.4 and Epi Info v3.5.1 2008 were used for statistical analysis. Results: The highest concordance was found between the 2007 WHO growth reference tables and the 2000 CDC tables with the T / E indicator in girls with kappa = 0.882 and in boys with kappa = 0.760; with the IMC / E indicator, the highest Kappa coefficient was found in the population of boys (kappa = 0.733) and in girls (kappa = 0.452). Conclusions: There is good concordance between both reference tables for the T / E indicator. There is moderate agreement with the IMC / E indicator between the 2007 WHO and 2000 CDC growth references tables for the diagnosis of nutritional status.