Evaluation of buccal smear as an indicator of nutritional status.

One hundred and forty eight healthy and 152 undernourished children with varying degrees of severity were studied to see if their buccal smear correlated with undernourishment. The frankly undernourished children had retrograde changes more often than the other children. But the proportion of children showing no retrograde changes was similar in the different groups. It was concluded that buccal smear is not a dependable indicator of under nutrition.