Explain about the Paediatric and Geriatric Nutrition?

Every stage has its unique requirements due to different changing needs. Adequate and optimum nutrition support is very important during the early critical periods of life to achieve normal growth and development. Besides, certain groups of children with different types of medical conditions may have feeding difficulties. In this last unit, we will focus on paediatric geriatic problems and their nutritional management. Many of these problems you may have already studied earlier in this course. Here in the first part of this unit we shall review them, particularly in the context of paediatric nutrition. Due to the changes in physiological function with aging, effect on absorption, retention and utilization of nutrients commonly occurs. With age the requirements for macro- and micronutrients also changes. Further, malnutrition and other problems amongst elderly persons have been observed -be it hospitalized patients, nursing home residents or outpatients. With the help of nutritional assessment the elderly at risk can be given preventive and treatment care as required. The second part of this unit deals with nutritional assessment tools and nutrition support for the elderly.