Abstract
The medical training for the feeding in the most cases of severely handicapped children is very difficult. For improving the training, the body size and the basal metabolic volume (BM) of severely handicapped children were measured and the measuring methods were discussed.
A total of 66 severely handicapped children were examined. They were divided into 4 groups by the motor function. The classification of the groups and the number of the children in each group were as in the following; group I was walking (12), group II was creeping (9), group III was sitting up in bed (11), group IV was lying (34). As a result, the average age, height, weight and Kaup index of them were 17 years old, 132cm, 25kg and 14, respectively. These average values were accounted for 83, 52 and 71% of each standard value. Especially, in group N, there were many very thin children. The average BM was 755kcal/day, and it was very low, 56.6% of the BM of healthy children (1350kcal/day).
Accordingly, the severely handicapped children whose physical constitutions were quite different from healthy children were examined, and the method of measuring BM was theoretical and practical when discussing the measurement of BM by kcal/m2/hr. Eighty-five percent of the standard measurement, which was calculated from the measurement of BM by kcal/m2/hr of the healthy children based on each sex and age, was considered as the BM of the severely handicapped children.
