Nutritional Risk Screening in Newborns in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Objectives: neonatal nutritional diagnostic tools is essential to early detection of babies at nutritional risk, included newborns hospitalized in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), to avoid the general assumption that all newborns in the NICU have the same nutritional risk to assess the nutritional risk of newborns admitted to the NICU.Methods: this is a cross-sectional, retrospective study, carried out by collecting data from medical and nutritional records of newborns admitted to the NICU in Ceará (Brazil).FARNNeo nutritional screening questionnaire was collected at first week in NICU and used to classify newborns as low (0 points), medium (1-3 points) or high nutritional risk (≥ 4 points).The association between gender, gestational age, and birth weight with nutritional risk, was analyzed by the Chi-square test.Results: a number of 56 newborns were evaluated with a mean gestational age of 33.0 ± 4.1 weeks and birth weight of 1.859 ± 868 g.There was a high prevalence of the preterm newborns (71.4%) and high nutritional risk (78.6%).At birth, 37.5% were underweight, and 26.8% with very low weight.The variable disease and/or clinical condition was the one that most contributed to increased neonatal nutritional risk, with 96.42 (18.72), followed by nutritional therapy 54.16 (32.13%).Conclusions: newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit had a high nutritional risk.The nutritional risk showed an important correlation with gestational age and birth weight classification.