NUTRITIONAL ANTHROPOMETRY - VALIDITY OF CUTOFF POINTS

The present communication seeks to describe an alternate approach of a rriving at cut-off levels using ratio of percentiles for (i) different iating normal children from the undernourished ones, and (ii) identify ing the severely undernourished group of children in the community on the basis of body weight and height. It also examines validity of the cut-off levels presently used of weight for age (Gomez and Indian Acad emy of Paediatrics classification) and height for age parameters. 1 .T he cut-off levels are independent of the reference standard and, as su ch, the same cut-off levels could be used irrespective of the standard s. 2. It is desirable to have separate cut-off levels for preschool an d school age groups. The use of common cut-off points for both the age groups seems to result in loss of sensitivity of the order of over 5 per cent. 3. The use of the 90 per cent cut-off level in the Gomez cla ssification misclassifies some of the normals as undernourished, there by tending to overestimate the problem of undernutrition in communitie s. 4. The body weight groups based on the suggested cut-off points do bear a relationship to the prevalence of signs of PEM-the greater the weight deficit, the higher the prevalence of signs of PEM in preschool children.