Introduction:

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.

Objective:

to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Spanish adaptation of the IMFC:CHD tool in infants with CHD.

Methods:

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.

Results:

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).

Conclusions:

the IMFC:CHD tool showed adequate validity and reliability, and could be considered as a useful resource for the identification of severe malnutrition.

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