Evaluation of nutritional status, nutritional habits and adaptation to mediterranean diet of pancreatitis patients

Objective: The effects of nutrition on health have been investigated for many years. Many etiologic factors have been implicated in the development of acute pancreatitis, which is one of the most important childhood diseases. The aim of this study was to compare the nutritional status, nutritional habits and compliance with the Mediterranean diet of patients with acute pancreatitis and a healthy control group. Materials and Methods: A total of 100 children(Fifty patients with acute pancreatitis and acute recurrent pancreatitis and fifty healthy controls) followed by Afyonkarahisar University of Health Sciences Medical Faculty between January 1, 2014 and March 10, 2019 were included in this study. Ethics committee approval was obtained from Afyonkarahisar Health Sciences University Medical Faculty Clinical Research Ethics Committee. The age, gender, height and weight of patients were recorded. After approval of voluntary consent form, parental information form and Mediterranean Diet Quality Index (KIDMED) were applied. Children between 2-18 years of age with acute pancreatitis and acute recurrent pancreatitis and patients who were accepted to participate into the study were included, while children with chronic disease were excluded from the study.SPSS versiyon20 (IBM, Newyork, Unites States) program was used in the analysis of the data, and p <0.05 was considered significance level. Results: The children with pancreatitis and the control group were similar in terms of gender (p = 0.546) and mean age (p = 0.130). The weight of the children with pancreatitis was 31.60± 15.60 kg and the control group was 30.30 ± 14.40 kg. There was no statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of weight (p = 0.743). When the scores of the patients with pancreatitis and control group were compared according to the answers given to the questionnaire, 8% of the patients with the diagnosis of pancreatitis received good scores from the KIDMED index, 56% of them were found to be moderate and 36% of them were found to be low. In the control group, 28% had a good score, 54% had a moderate level of total score, and 18% had a very low level of nutrition scores. There was a statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of KIDMED index score (p = 0.014). Conclusion: The study is one of the pioneering studies in the literature to evaluate the effect of nutritional properties in patients with acute pancreatitis. Although the patient and control groups were similar in many respects, they were found to be different in terms of nutritional habits. According to the scores obtained from the scale, it was observed that the nutritional habits of the patient group were worse than the control group. In order to validate the relationships we present in the study and to establish causal relationships, more advanced multicenter studies with larger patients group are needed.