ESPE Abstracts

Background: If in European and American countries we have very clear statistics about growth in Cystic fibrosis (CF). It is not the same in the majority of African countries because it has long been considered as a very rare pathology there. Actually without newborn screening; CF is under-diagnosed and given the fatal nature of the disease, many patients are lost.

Objective: describe the anthropometric parameters of infants with cystic fibrosis in western Algeria and find correlation between height and other parameters as parental height, sex, the frequency of hospital admission and bacterial lung infections.

Methodology: it is a cross sectional observational study including all the patients with CF diagnosed and followed up to the age of 1 year at children’s hospital Canastel in Oran (Algeria)the main center for monitoring CF in children in western Algeria. The diagnosis (dg) is made by the Elevated sweat chloride value ≥60 mmol/L on sweat chloride testing

Results: out of 124 patient files only 67 were diagnosed before the age of 1 year old and 5 files were excluded for missing data,35 males and 27 females. In our study 80 % of patients were <-2DS for weight and 75% were < -2DS for height. There was a highly significant correlation between height at dg and sexe: male -4.20 DS [-4.88 - -2.22], female -2.59 [-3.50 - -1.80] (P = 0.021). and a statistically significant linear correlation between heightsDS at dg and target mid parental height DS. At one year old the height DS was negatively correlated to the number of chest infections and to the pseudomonas Aeriginosa infection.

Conclusion: in countries without newborn screening it is important to consider cystic fibrosis, which represents a significant cause of growth delay. Faced with a growth delay at the age of 1 year despite management, infection with Pseudomonas should be considered.