Because of parental “ignorance”, the mother is 1.68 meters tall, the son is only 1.55 meters tall at the age of 18, the bone age test surprisingly found that the child can no longer “grow” …… When I heard that the child had already matured and the predicted bone age was more than 15 to 18 years old, the mother was heartbroken. When she heard that the child had already matured and the predicted bone age was more than 15 to 18 years old and could not grow taller, the mother cried sadly …… Such cases occur repeatedly in the endocrine department of children’s hospitals.
A. The final height of a child is determined by the bone age, not the age!
Bone age refers to the age of the bones, or bone age for short. Bone age and actual age are not necessarily the same, and the growth of a person’s height is more related to bone age rather than depending on actual age. Generally speaking, when the bone age of girls exceeds 15 years old, and when the bone age of boys exceeds 17 years old, the epiphysis has mostly closed and there is almost no chance of growing taller.
What are the factors that cause children to end up “short” due to parents’ “ignorance”?
Myth 1: The younger the bone age is, the better the child will grow taller eventually, and we persistently wait for a miracle to happen.
There are many examples in our endocrinology specialty: 17-18 year old boy, only 125-129 cm, bone age only 7-9 years old, and even a 32 year old adult, only 128 cm, bone age only 8 and a half years old, until adult (even 32 years old) has no male sexual characteristics (no penis, testicular enlargement, no throat node).
The reason for this type of children’s short stature: complete lack of growth hormone, even though the bone age is significantly behind the actual age, and eventually “no growth”.
(a) Growth hormone deficiency (dwarfism) 1. The most common type of dwarfism in the past, more common in boys, such as difficult births (breech birth, 1/3 of children eventually suffer from “dwarfism”) 2. Most of them have delayed puberty (no enlargement of penis and testicles, no change of voice and no growth of laryngeal nodes in boys aged 14-16 years). (2) Children with genetic-related familial dwarfism: The reason of dwarfism in these children: their growth potential is lower than that of normal children. The reason for this type of children’s short stature is that they have poorer growth potential than normal children and eventually become “short”.
1. The parents (or one of them) are short in stature; 2. They have their own unique growth pattern: ① Normal or small in length at birth. ④Bone age before puberty often lags behind the actual age, and even if there is no “jump” during puberty, the original lagging bone age can reach or even significantly exceed the actual age, and eventually “short”.
Myth 2: I don’t believe that “precocious puberty” can cause “short”.
Precocious puberty or early puberty: girls show breast enlargement before the age of 8 to 10, and boys show penis and testicular enlargement before the age of 9 to 11. Although both boys and girls are temporarily “tall” in the early stage, due to premature sexual development and menstruation, the early secretion of a large amount of sex hormones, epiphyseal maturity is too fast, the bone age is obviously ahead of the epiphysis, resulting in early epiphyseal fusion, prematurely stop growing, and eventually short, girls are less than 150cm tall, boys are less than 160cm. How to seek medical consultation for children with unsatisfactory height?
What worries our pediatric endocrinologists clinically is that some parents have the wrong view that “children grow early and late” or blindly apply some so-called “height-enhancing drugs and supplies” without scientific basis, missing the best time for treatment and delaying The best time for treatment will be missed, and the child’s life will be delayed.
Therefore, if your child is found to be short, parents should neither rush to the doctor nor let nature take its course. We recommend that you go to a children’s hospital (endocrine specialist) for a bone age test as soon as possible to clarify the cause and to grasp the best time to treat your child. If you need to communicate with me before the consultation, you can leave a message online and I will reply to you at a convenient time. If you are not convenient to visit a foreign patient and have some examination information, you can contact me by phone.