COMMENTARY

Growth

Height monitoring as a diagnostic test

P C Hindmarsh¹, T J Cole²

¹ Centre for Human Growth and Maturation, Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK
² Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr P C Hindmarsh
The Middlesex Hospital, Mortimer Street, London W1N 8AA, UK; p.hindmarsh@ucl.ac.uk

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Commentary on the paper by van Buuren et al

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Keywords: height monitoring; diagnosis; growth

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Measurement of height is an important component of child health care and has been widely incorporated into paediatric practice. Yet little is known about how it performs in terms of sensitivity and specificity for detecting growth disorders. This lack of information impacts on health care in a number of ways. First, it is difficult to inform public health policy via recommendations for height monitoring, which has resulted in a plethora of statements made about referral for height assessment. One consequence of this has been to opt for a minimum standard for practice as exemplified in Health for all children.¹ Second, the lack of information on test performance in the early steps of the short stature evaluation decision tree makes it difficult to interpret subsequent tests and ultimately the likelihood of the presence or absence of disease.²

The Dutch study reported by van Buuren and colleagues in this issue³ . . . [Full text of this article]

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• Drake, A. J, Kelnar, C. J H (2006). The evaluation of growth and the identification of growth hormone deficiency. EDUCATION AND PRACTICE 91: ep61-ep67 [Full Text]