RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Failure to thrive: the prevalence and concurrence of anthropometric criteria in a general infant population
JF Archives of Disease in Childhood
JO Arch Dis Child
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
SP 109
OP 114
DO 10.1136/adc.2005.080333
VO 92
IS 2
A1 E M Olsen
A1 J Petersen
A1 A M Skovgaard
A1 B Weile
A1 T Jørgensen
A1 C M Wright
YR 2007
UL http://adc.bmj.com/content/92/2/109.abstract
AB Background: Failure to thrive (FTT) in early childhood is associated with subsequent developmental delay and is recognised to reflect relative undernutrition. Although the concept of FTT is widely used, no consensus exists regarding a specific definition, and it is unclear to what extent different anthropometric definitions concur. Objective: To compare the prevalence and concurrence of different anthropometric criteria for FTT and test the sensitivity and positive predictive values of these in detecting children with “significant undernutrition”, defined as the combination of slow conditional weight gain and low body mass index (BMI). Methods: Seven criteria of FTT, including low weight for age, low BMI, low conditional weight gain and Waterlow’s criterion for wasting, were applied to a birth cohort of 6090 Danish infants. The criteria were compared in two age groups: 2–6 and 6–11 months of life. Results: 27% of infants met one or more criteria in at least one of the two age groups. The concurrence among the criteria was generally poor, with most children identified by only one criterion. Positive predictive values of different criteria ranged from 1% to 58%. Most single criteria identified either less than half the cases of significant undernutrition (found in 3%) or included far too many, thus having a low positive predictive value. Children with low weight for height tended to be relatively tall. Conclusions: No single measurement on its own seems to be adequate for identifying nutritional growth delay. Further longitudinal population studies are needed to investigate the discriminating power of different criteria in detecting significant undernutrition and subsequent outcomes.