Short stature has become one of the most common endocrine diseases in children’s growth and development today, and is also an issue of great concern to children themselves, parents, teachers and society. At that time, the child’s epiphysis is close to or has already closed, and the growth potential is very limited, so the best time for treatment is missed, and it is often too late to regret. Therefore, it is important to detect and diagnose children with short stature at an early stage. Huang Qiushuang of the Health Care Department of Hengyang Women’s and Children’s Health Hospital found that children who are short should not wait and pay attention to them as early as possible, and do the necessary bone age test and growth hormone measurement to understand the causes of their short stature. As long as the child is diagnosed and treated early, dwarfism can be completely treated. Once the disease is diagnosed, the younger the child is, the better the results and the lower the cost.
In a word, there is no child who cannot grow taller, only the misconception of fluke and procrastination. Parents should first master the scientific knowledge of growth and development, exclude misconceptions and understand the scientific methods for children to grow taller, so that children can take fewer detours and have a better future.
1.What is short stature?
Children from 2 years old to pre-pubertal can be calculated by the formula of normal height: number of years x 7 + 70 (cm). A child who is 2 standard deviations below normal height (about 6-7% of normal height) or whose height is 3 percentile below the average height of children of the same age and gender (in layman’s terms, a hundred children of the same age and gender are lined up according to their size, and the last 3 are short) is called short stature.
What should I do if I find out that I have a short stature? First of all, you should go to a regular hospital to have a relevant examination by a child endocrinologist or a dwarfism specialist to distinguish the cause and do targeted treatment. There are more than 300 kinds of diseases known to be related to short stature, and it is undoubtedly terrible to take drugs indiscriminately without distinguishing the cause. Some height enhancement drugs on the market contain sex hormones, which are suspected of “boosting growth” and can promote early fusion of epiphysis (bone growth line), leading to premature stoppage of bone growth and eventual height loss.
2.What tests should be done for short stature? First of all, a left hand X-ray should be taken to understand the bone age and to make an annual height prediction. Usually, when the bones are developing normally, the bone age is approximately equal to the age. If the difference between bone age and age is large or the predicted height is too low, the cause should be actively sought. Bone age greater than age (e.g., 10 years for 8-year-olds) is most often due to precocious puberty and hyperthyroidism. If the bone age is younger than age (e.g., 6 years old in an 8-year-old child), it is most likely due to growth hormone deficiency and delayed sexual development. If the epiphysis is closed, there is no possibility of growth. Then we will do growth hormone stimulation test, check thyroid hormone, sex hormone, chromosome (some girls), etc. Before applying growth hormone, we usually need to check blood routine, head CT or MRI, blood sugar, liver and kidney.
3.When is the most appropriate time to treat children with short stature? The earlier the treatment, the better the effect. Some parents think that “children have early growth and late growth”, so it is easy to delay the best time for treatment. The standard of living in China has improved significantly in the past 20 to 30 years, while food safety has declined, environmental pollution, the proliferation of health care products, coupled with the spread of various adverse information, children’s development is significantly earlier than the previous generation. In order to detect it as early as possible, in addition to comparing height with children of the same age, we should also pay attention to the growth rate of children in general. Less than 4~5 cm per year from 3 years old to puberty and less than 5.5~6 cm per year during puberty is considered as growth retardation, and we should go to the hospital for examination and consultation with a specialist in time.