Validation of Clinical Indicators of Imbalanced Nutrition: Less Than Body Requirements in Early Childhood

• The study examines clinical indicators in early childhood to clinically validate the nursing diagnosis of Imbalanced nutrition: less than body requirements.
• Seven indicators that exhibited best measures of diagnostic accuracy based on latent class analysis with random effects.
• Some differences in measures of diagnostic accuracy were observed for gender, age, and length of stay

This is a clinical validation study of the nursing diagnosis of imbalanced nutrition: less than body requirements based on the diagnostic accuracy measures. Measures of sensitivity and specificity were calculated based on the latent class analysis method using a random effects model in a sample of 123 children between 0 and 6 years old. The prevalence of the diagnosis was estimated to be 27.6% using the latent class model. Indicators that exhibited the best measures of diagnostic accuracy included insufficient interest in food and satiety immediately upon ingesting food. A total of seven clinical indicators were validated clinically.