Recovery time from severe acute malnutrition and associated factors among under-5 children in Yekatit 12 Hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: a retrospective cohort study.

Objectives: Recovery time from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) is often a neglected topic despite its clinical impact. Although a few studies have examined nutritional recovery time, the length of hospitalization in those studies varied greatly. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the recovery time from SAM and to identify predictors of length of hospitalization among under-5 children.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted among 423 under-5 children with SAM who had been admitted to Yekatit 12 Hospital. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to estimate time to nutritional recovery, and Cox proportional hazard regression analysis was performed to determine independent predictors.

Results: The nutritional recovery rate was 81.3%, and the median recovery time was 15.00 days (95% confidence interval [CI], 13.61 to 16.39). Age, daily weight gain per kilogram of body weight, vaccination status, and the existence of at least 1 comorbidity (e.g., pneumonia, stunting, shock, and deworming) were found to be significant independent predictors of nutritional recovery time. The adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) for nutritional recovery decreased by 1.9% for every 1-month increase in child age (aHR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.97 to 0.99).

Conclusions: The overall nutritional recovery time in this study was within the Sphere standards. However, approximately 13.0% of children stayed in the hospital for more than 28.00 days, which is an unacceptably large proportion. Daily weight gain of ≥8 g/kg, full vaccination, and deworming with albendazole or mebendazole reduced nutritional recovery time. Conversely, older age, pneumonia, stunting, and shock increased nutritional recovery time.