Short stature has become a social problem that cannot be ignored.
A survey conducted in Shanghai in 2007 showed that 90% of children with short stature have low self-esteem, depression and other psychological disorders, and will not be able to work normally as adults, facing heavy pressure in terms of further education, employment and marriage.
The happy life of the seven dwarfs and Snow White can only happen in fairy tales, but in real life, there are too many problems caused by short stature.
Wei Zeyang, vice president of the National Dwarf Friendship Association, said that according to the results of an internal survey conducted by the association, 72% of adult dwarfs have only junior high school education or less, 68% of dwarfs do not have stable jobs, less than 15% of dwarfs fall in love and get married normally, and 100% of dwarfs have suffered from employment discrimination. In these important indicators to measure the quality of life, dwarf people are much lower than normal people.
Parents have many misconceptions, and children with short stature should be detected and treated early.
There are many misconceptions in society and parents about the growth and development of children and their height. This is one of the reasons for the low treatment rate of childhood dwarfism.
More than half of parents do not know that they need to observe children’s height from 0-3 years old; more than 1/3 of parents do not have the habit of scientifically measuring children’s height; 30% of parents mistakenly believe that as long as nutrition keeps up, height can catch up; more than 70% of parents lack sufficient understanding of dwarfism, do not consider dwarfism as a disease, and stick to “late growth” after discovering that their children are short. After they find out that their children are short, they stick to the misconception of “late growth” and “twenty-three scampering” and wait blindly.
At present, the standard deviation method or the percentile method is generally used to determine short stature clinically, that is, if the child’s height is lower than 2 standard deviations or 3 percentile of the normal height of children of the same age, gender, region and race, it can be diagnosed as dwarfism.
Parents are advised to measure their children’s height every three months. If they are always in the top three in class standing in line or are 5-10 cm shorter than children of the same age, parents should pay attention.
Research shows that the younger the child is, the more active the proliferation and differentiation of the cartilage layer of the epiphysis, the greater the potential and time space for bone growth in children, the more sensitive the response to treatment, and the better the growth effect. Moreover, the younger and lighter the child is, the smaller the dose of growth hormone medication used and the less costly it is.
This requires parents to pay close attention to their children’s growth and to detect the signs of slow growth in time: (1) Children’s growth rate is less than 7 cm/year before the age of 3 (2) Less than 5 cm/year from the age of 3 to puberty (3) Less than 6 cm/year during puberty After puberty, the bones mature and the epiphysis closes, the height will stop growing, and no method can make the child continue to grow taller. As the best time to treat the child is missed, many parents have to regret for life.
It is worth noting that if your child’s growth rate is higher than normal, you should also be alert to the problem of precocious puberty.