A common problem in the diagnosis of growth hormone deficiency dwarfism is that parents and/or children often do not notice the slowdown in growth until they are significantly behind in height. In addition, it has been found that many parents often treat “short” as “late growth” and imagine that their children will have an unexpected period of rapid growth during adolescence, but as a result, they miss the best time to diagnose and treat dwarfism. Therefore, clinicians and health care workers should assist parents to regularly check height, calculate growth rate, and closely observe the growth curve of the child. Early identification of the cause and early standardized treatment can avoid missing the good opportunity for growth. The earlier a child with GHD is identified, not only is hGH treatment more effective, but also saves money.
In addition, for some patients, growth retardation or decreased growth rate may be the early clinical manifestation of intracranial tumor, so for these patients, cranial MRI examination should be performed as much as possible to avoid missing the diagnosis and delaying the treatment. If parents find that their children are shorter than their peers, they should consult a doctor in time to avoid delaying the best treatment time for their children.
Misconception 2: High fascination is not allowed In long-term clinical practice, we often encounter some parents and children with high fascination. With the improvement of the living standard, the average height of youngsters around us is also gradually high, and the expectation of parents and society on children’s height is even “higher and higher”. Many boys want to be as tall and graceful as Yao Ming, while girls are equally eager to be as tall and graceful as models. However, there are objective rules for how tall a person’s body grows. If the parents themselves are not tall, but they want their children to grow up to one meter eight, or obviously the epiphysis has closed, can no longer grow, but still do not die.
The use of some extreme means of height increase, such as bone amputation, or the abuse of growth hormone in children with normal growth, once the bone amputation may become infected, or even cause osteomyelitis, resulting in disability. After the surgery, artificially unequal legs are caused, and the abuse of growth hormone leads to acromegaly. We would like to remind those who expect to achieve perfect height through cosmetic bone amputation to be cautious: a healthy and sound body is far more important than getting rid of a slightly less-than-ideal height. Whether you still have room to grow taller.
Myth 3: Growth hormone therapy is not a panacea Research on the etiological composition of dwarfism shows that dwarfism caused by genetic factors and delayed youth development accounts for about 2/3, while pathological dwarfism including idiopathic dwarfism, growth hormone deficiency, precocious puberty, bone development disorder, chromosomal abnormalities, intrauterine growth retardation, Turner syndrome, etc. only accounts for 1/3, and it should also be noted that some of the causes are intracranial, especially hypothalamic or pituitary tumors.
Therefore, in the diagnosis of dwarfism, the first thing is to clarify the cause of the disease, and if patients with dwarfism due to intracranial tumors are treated with growth hormone, the consequences will be serious. At the same time, if we are satisfied with growth hormone treatment, but ignore the comprehensive treatment such as balanced diet, exercise, quality sleep and proper psychological adjustment, the effect of growth hormone treatment will definitely be greatly affected, which will eventually cause great economic waste.