Predictors of undesirable treatment outcome of severe acute malnutrition inpatient children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: a retrospective cohort study

Abstract Background: Globally, in 2018, malnutrition contributed to 45% of all child deaths. These early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with basic interventions. Hence, this study intends to provide a quantitative example of factors associated with undesirable treatment outcomes of severe acute malnutrition (SAM). Methods: We studied a retrospective cohort of 304 children aged 6-59 months with complicated SAM admitted to Yekatit 12 teaching hospital from 2013- 2016 . We extracted data from hospital records on nutritional status, socio-demographic factors and medical conditions during admission. The analysis was carried out with SPSS version 20.The Kaplan-Meier estimator was employed to analyze the recovery rate of the children undergoing treatment for SAM and Cox regression was used to adjust for confounding effects of other variables. Result: From overall of 304 under-five children with SAM, 133 (51.4%) were males and 126 (48.6%) were females. Marasmus was the most common type of severe acute malnutrition 132(51%). The recovery, death and defaulter rate were 70.4%, 12.2% and 8.2% respectively. The main predictors of undesirable outcome were found to be presence of HIV antibody (AHR=3.208; 95% CI: [1.045-9.846]) and sepsis (AHR= 7.677, 95% CI: [2.320-25.404])Conclusion: The study revealed that the overall treatment outcomes were below the SPHERE standard recommendation and the main predictors of death in children receiving in-patient treatment for SAM were HIV and sepsis. Intervention to reduce death should focus cases with comorbidities especially HIV and sepsis.