CALORIC REQUIREMENTS OF MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN WITH AND WITHOUT MOTOR DYSFUNCTION

Children with moderate to profound mental retardation frequently are short for their age and commonly have some type of motor dysfunction. These conditions cause their caloric requirement to differ from normal recommendations for children of their age group. Consequently, a means for expressing their caloric needs in terms of body size and motor status instead of age is desirable. In this report we show that their caloric needs can be conveniently expressed in terms of body height. Ambulatory mentally retarded children with various types of motor dysfunction required approximately the same number of calories per unit of body height as those without motor dysfunction. Children whose motor dysfunction was severe enough to cause them to be nonambulatory required approximately 75 per cent as many calories as ambulatory children of comparable height. © 1969 The C. V. Mosby Company.