RESUMEN
INTRODUCTION: Critically ill patients, including obstetrical patients, face undernutrition but a reliable and cost effective study to assess their nutritional state is still missing. Our main objective was to analyze serum leptin and adiponectin concentrations in puerperal women attended in an Obstetrical Intensive Care Unit (OICU) in order to evaluate their potential role as nutritional metabolic parameter. METHODS: This was a descriptive, clinical, longitudinal and comparative study. We evaluated the anthropometric variables, clinical laboratories, daily calories and adiponectin and leptin serum levels of 16 puerperal women attended at the OICU of the Materno Perinatal Hospital "Mónica Pretelini" (HMPMP). RESULTS: For all women there was a negative correlation with Spearman test between leptin the day of discharge from the obstetrical intensive care unit and the days of stay -0.632 (p = 0.011). Considering an adiponectin/leptin ratio, the media in the first day was of 0.3 (0.07-13.6) and in the day of discharge it was of 2.4 (0.1-24.6) in overweight women. The same values for obese women were of 0.3 (0.2-0.4) and 0.5 (0.3-1.2). CONCLUSION: After an average of six days of hospitalization, leptin showed a decrement in women attended at the OICU. As expected, adiponectin increased in both groups. The adiponectin/ leptin ratio could be a useful metabolic parameter.