Guideline for referring short or tall children in preventive child health care

Abstract

Aim: To develop a guideline for preventive child healthcare professionals in order to improve early detection of pathological disorders associated with short stature (or growth faltering) or tall stature (or accelerated growth).

Methods: We updated the previous Dutch guideline for short stature in children aged 0-9 years and extended it to adolescents (10-17 years), and added a guideline for tall stature, based on literature and input from an expert committee. Specificities were calculated in a cohort of healthy Dutch children aged 0-9 years (n = 970). We investigated the impact of a late onset of puberty on height standard deviation score based on the Dutch growth charts.

Results: Growth parameters of the guideline include height, the distance between height and target height and change of height over time. Other parameters include diagnostic clues from medical history and physical examination, for example behavioural problems, precocious or delayed puberty, body disproportion and dysmorphic features.

Conclusion: Preventive child healthcare professionals now have an updated guideline for referring short or tall children to specialist care. Further research is needed on the diagnostic yield after referral and specificity at field level.

Keywords: children; growth; guideline; height; monitoring.