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Idiopathic short stature; Non-growth hormone deficient short stature
Short stature refers to any person who is significantly below the average height for a person of the same age and sex.
The term often refers to children or adolescents who are significantly below the average height of their peers.
A growth chart is used to show a child's current height and how fast he or she is growing. It can compare your child to other children of the same age and gender (male or female).
If a child's height is more than 2 SD's below the average height of other children the same age, the child is said to have short stature. This means that almost all of the other children that age (more than 95% or 19 out of 20) are taller.
Your health care provider will monitor your child's growth rate over time.
Many parents become worried if their children are shorter than most or all of the children around them. However, short stature is not necessarily a sign of a health problem.
Short stature that has no medical cause (idiopathic short stature) can be due to:
Short stature may be a symptom of a number of medical conditions or problems, including:
This list does not include every possible cause of short stature.
Cohen P, Rogol AD, Deal CL, et al. Wit JM: 2007 ISS Consensus Workshop participants. Consensus statement on the diagnosis and treatment of children with idiopathic short stature: a summary of the Growth Hormone Research Society, the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society, and the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Workshop. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008;93:4210-4217.
Parks JS, Feiner EL. Hypopituitarism. In: Kliegman RM, Behrman RE, Jenson HB, Stanton BF, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 18th ed. Philadelphia, Pa:Saunders Elsevier;2007:chap 558.
Collett-Solberg PF, Misra M. Drug and Therapeutics Committee of the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society. The role of recombinant human insulin-like growth factor-1 in treating children with short stature. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008;93:10-18.
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