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Get answers to your child's growth, nutrition, and feeding behavior questions.
Growth and Nutrition Experts’s Bio | Q&A Archive
Panhypopituitarism; Pituitary dwarfism; Recombinant human GH (rhGH); Acquired growth hormone deficiency; Congenital growth hormone deficiency; Somatropin
Children with growth hormone deficiency have a slow or flat rate of growth, usually less than 2 inches per year. The slow growth may not appear until a child is 2 or 3 years old.
The child will be much shorter than most or all children of the same age and gender.
Children with growth hormone deficiency still have normal body proportions, as well as normal intelligence. However, their face often appears younger than children of the same age. They may also have a chubby body build.
In older children, puberty may come late or may not come at all.
A growth chart is used to compare a child's current height, and how fast he or she is growing, to other children of the same age and gender.
A physical examination including weight, height, and body proportions will show signs of slowed growth rate. The child will not follow the normal growth curves.
Several blood tests are used to help diagnose growth hormone deficiency and its causes:
Imaging or x-ray tests may include the following:
Parks JS, Felner EI. Hypopituitarism. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 19th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier;2011:chap 551.
Reiter EO, Rosenfeld RG. Normal and aberrant growth. In: Kronenberg HM, Melmed S, Polonsky KS, Larsen PR, eds. Williams Textbook of Endocrinology. 11th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Saunders Elsevier;2008:chap 23.
Cook DM, Yuen KC, Biller BM, Kemp SF, Vance ML; American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists medical guidelines for clinical practice for growth hormone use in growth hormone-deficient adults and transition patients - 2009 update. Endocr Pract. 2009;15:1-29.
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