BACKGROUND
Malnutrition is the most common problem in congenital heart diseases patients. Nutrition based mobile applications play an important role in planning and tracking of diet for better nutritional status.
OBJECTIVE
To assess usefulness of the nutrition based mobile application among children post cardiac surgery.
METHODS
This was a single-center, double-blinded, randomized controlled trial that was conducted at a Tertiary Care Hospital, Rawalpindi. The study duration was 6 months from February 2021 till July 2021. Sample size was calculated to be 88. Intervention group caregivers were provided with a nutrition based mobile application by a dietitian, primary objective of the mobile application was to improve /maintain nutritional status of children. Caregiver’s of children were able to choose their nutritional goals. Nutritional intake was tracked, daily and monthly insight regarding nutrients intake was provided to the user. Usual care group was handed a pamphlet with diet instructions on discharge by a dietitian.
RESULTS
At the end of intervention preferred diet planning tool for 79% of the participant’s caregiver was mobile application. At 8th week 93% of the caregivers considered visual cues useful, 80% thought that the mobile application language was understandable, 79% thought nutritional goal setting was a useful feature in mobile application and 55% thought the recipes in the application were useful.
CONCLUSIONS
The study showed strength for the future of scalable modern technology for self-nutrition monitoring. The average income status and education level of the participant’s caregivers in our study was low to average. It represented a population that has been slow to adopt new technology but our participants showed interest in mobile application and used the technology after a brief training session.
CLINICALTRIAL
Study was registered on clinicaltrial.gov with trial identity number NCT04782635.