Abstract

BALDERRAMA ORELLANA, Giana Carola  and  SUAREZ BARRIENTOS, Eduardo. Calcium alterations in children with protein energetic malnutrition at the Children’s Hospital “Manuel Ascencio Villarroel”. Gac Med Bol [online]. 2008, vol.31, n.1, pp.14-17. ISSN 1012-2966.

The ionized calcium represents the free fraction and 50% of total calcium in the plasma and reflects the true state of calcium in the organism, as in health and disease. Will be interesting to determinate how frequent is hipocalcemia in children wtih malnutrition, which type of malnutrition is most often in hipocalcemia, the relation between total calcium, corrected calcium and ionized calcium with the clinic and the low stature, besides to determine the handling in this alteration. This is a descriptive, retrospective and analytical study. The sample was constituted by 67 children with patients between a month and minors of five years old, they were admited at the Children’s Hospital “Manuel Ascencio Villarroel” of the Cochabamba city, during years 2004 to 2006. We found in the study that the frequency of hipocalcemia in our means was of 27%, from these the acute and the chronicle reacute malnutrition were the ones that showed the most hipocalcemia frequency, there was a significant difference in the total measuring of correct calcium and ionic calcium,with ionic calcium calculating; the clinic of hipocalcemia only was seen in 11.1%, being this unspecific; the low stature is not dependent of hipocalcemia; the 44,4% of the pa­ tients with hipocalcemia were handled with calcium replacement by endovenosa route, the sintomatología was not criterion for the treatment. It’s necessary continue with the study of the importance of calcium in the initial phase of serious protein­energetic malnutrition, controlling also the values of fosfatasa alkaline, studying his variations and their clinical importance.

Keywords : Ionic calcium; hipocalcemia; malnutrition.

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