Validation of the instrument "Infant Malnutrition and Feeding Checklist for Congenital Heart Disease", a tool to identify risk of malnutrition and feeding difficulties in infants with congenital heart disease

Abstract

currently, various tools have been designed to timely detect the risk of malnutrition in hospitalized children. In those with a diagnosis of congenital heart disease (CHD), there is only one tool developed in Canada: Infant Malnutrition and Feeding Checklist for Congenital Heart Disease (IMFC:CHD), which was designed in English. to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Spanish adaptation of the IMFC:CHD tool in infants with CHD. cross-sectional validation study carried out in two stages. The first, of translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the tool, and the second, of validation of the new translated tool, where evidence of reliability and validity were obtained. in the first stage, the tool was translated and adapted to the Spanish language; for the second stage, 24 infants diagnosed with CHD were included. The concurrent criterion validity between the screening tool and the anthropometric evaluation was evaluated, obtaining a substantial agreement (κ = 0.660, 95 % CI: 0.36-0.95) and for the predictive criterion validity, which was compared with the days of hospital stay, moderate agreement was obtained (κ = 0.489, 95 % CI: 0.1-0.8). The reliability of the tool was evaluated through external consistency, measuring the inter-observer agreement, obtaining a substantial agreement (κ = 0.789, 95 % CI: 0.5-0.9), and the reproducibility of the tool showed an almost perfect agreement (κ = 1, CI 95 %: 0.9-1.0). the IMFC:CHD tool showed adequate validity and reliability, and could be considered as a useful resource for the identification of severe malnutrition.