Prevalence of breastfeeding and nutritional of pre term children assisted in reference maternity

Abstract

Objective: To know the prevalence of breastfeeding and the nutritional status of pre term babies assisted at a nutritionist's office. Method: Cross-sectional study with sample of 52 children. The data were entered and processed in the SPSS software, 17,0. The Chi-square and Fischer's exact tests were used for association analysis. Results: 46% of the babies under six months were receiving exclusive breastfeeding; 38,6% were being breastfed and 15.4% had been weaned. As for the nutritional status, the indexes for weight/age and height/age showed that most of the babies were eutrophic, 84% and 92%, respectively; the weight/height ratio points to overweight and obesity risk (56%), in contrast with underweight (22%); the BMI/age ratio points to overweight and obesity risk (52%) and underweight (20%). Conclusion: The results show higher prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding when compared to other studies, which is probably related to actions taken towards this service.