14-year-old Xiao Rui, because from childhood height has been significantly lower than his peers, two days ago to Wu Maoping, director of a measurement, his height is only 148 cm, belonging to the range of dwarfism, so much so that Xiao Rui’s father is anxious. Wu Maoping, director of the child health department at the Weifang Maternal and Child Health Hospital, said parents should be especially vigilant about dwarfism, and the earlier the treatment, the better.
Generally speaking, boys enter puberty at the age of 12 and grow about 28 cm, while girls enter puberty at the age of 10 and grow about 25 cm. However, if the growth rate is too slow every year, the height will still be very short. This summer, there has been a sharp increase in the number of hospital outpatient clinics, and about 80% of them have been diagnosed with “hereditary dwarfism” (idiopathic dwarfism). However, most parents mistakenly believe that idiopathic dwarfism is not a disease and choose not to intervene or treat it. As a result, the timing of treatment is delayed and the child’s future height is even much lower than the genetic height, which parents regret.
Director Wu said, from the clinical characteristics, children with idiopathic dwarfism do not look abnormal, and their bone age is similar to their actual age, but their height is shorter than that of their peers. As the cause of idiopathic dwarfism is not yet clinically clear, many parents wait for their children to leap during adolescence with the traditional concept of “early growth and late growth” and “twenty-three leaps and bounds”, which leads to difficulties in schooling, employment, marriage and socialization in adulthood. The result is that children encounter difficulties in schooling, employment, marriage, social interaction and other aspects of adulthood, which will also affect their personality development.
There is actually a pattern for children to grow in size. Generally speaking, a child’s length increases by about 25 cm in the first year of life, 10 cm in the second year, and after the age of 3, the child continues to grow at a rate of about 5-6 cm per year until adolescence, when the height of a boy grows by an average of about 10 cm per year and that of a girl by an average of about 8 cm per year. It is recommended that parents should keep an eye on their children’s height changes, and it is best to make a height record for them from a young age, noting the annual height growth value. Once you find that your child lags behind children of the same age, grows less than 5 cm in a year, or ranks in the top three of the class for a long time, you should realize that your child may have a growth disorder problem and should seek medical help in time for early diagnosis and treatment.
The younger the child is, the younger the bone age is, the more active the cartilage layer of the epiphysis is in proliferation and differentiation, the more space and potential the child has for growth, the more sensitive the child is to treatment, the better the effect of medication for growth, and the more height growth can be obtained. Therefore, the golden time for dwarfism treatment is from the age of three to the pre-pubertal period. Once parents find out that their children have been ranked in the top three of the class, have been half a head lower than their peers for a long time, or have grown less than 5 cm a year, they should bring them to the hospital for consultation at the first time.