A Study to Compare the Nutritional Status Assessed by can Score and Ponderal Index against who Intrauterine Growth Curves among Newborns at Birth in Selected Hospital of Ambala, Haryana

The neonatal morbidity and mortality is closely related to the nutritional status of newborn at birth and early identification of malnutrition with appropriate tool and technique can reduce the mortality rate. Descriptive and comparative survey design was used to assess and compare the Nutritional status of newborns at birth by CAN Score and Ponderal Index against WHO Intrauterine growth curves at MMIMS&R Hospital, Mullana Ambala. Sixty newborns were selected by purposive sampling from NICU and postnatal wards. The data was collected by Performa for newborn and maternal characteristics, WHO Intrauterine Growth Curves, Ponderal Index and observation sheet of CAN Score. Findings revealed that Ponderal Index (48.4%) classified more newborns as malnourished as compared to CAN Score (25%) with regard to WHO Intrauterine growth curves (21.6%). Ponderal Index has higher Sensitivity (76.9%) and lower Specificity (59.5%) than CAN Score (38.4%, 78.7%) respectively whereas Positive predictive value and Negative predictive value of Ponderal Index (34.4%, 90.3%) was higher than CAN Score (33.3%,82.2%). The likelihood ratio of Positive test of Ponderal Index (1.89) was higher than CAN Score (1.80) and likelihood ratio of Negative test of Ponderal Index (0.38) was lower than CAN Score (0.78) test indicating that Ponderal Index can act more sensitive indicator of assessing malnutrition than CAN Score. The main conclusion of the study is that Ponderal Index may be a simple clinical index but sensitive predictor for identifying malnutrition and for prediction of neonatal morbidity associated with it, without the aid of any sophisticated equipments.