Risk factors associated to Acute Diarrheal Disease in children under a year. Bayamo, 2011

Abstract

Introduction: the Acute Diarrheal Diseases (ADD) constitutes one of the most serious health problems, and one of the most frequent requests of medical consultation in children under a year.
Objective: to identify some risk factors to acquire the Acute Diarrheal Diseases in children under 1 year who were hospitalized with this diagnosis in the Gastroenterology Service of the Pediatric Teaching Hospital ¨General Luis Angel Milanés Tamayo¨, in Bayamo, Granma, during the period of January 1^st to December 31, 2011.
Method: it was performed a case-control study. There were selected like controls, children under 1 year without diarrheas, hospitalized in the Miscellaneous Service of the Hospital. During this period it was investigated the association of the diarrheas with the socio demographic, environmental, nutritional and other risk factors related with the mother.
Results: it is concluded then that that children under 6 months, prematurity, the use of previous antibiotics, malnutrition, non exclusive breast-feeding and the mothers with a lower cultural level, constituted the risk factors to acquire the Acute Diarrheal Diseases.
Conclusions: the researched factors contributed to the risk of acquiring Acute Diarrheal Diseases, except crowding. The most significant factors were malnutrition, non exclusive breast-feeding, the low cultural level of the mother and the previous use of antibiotics.