How to detect (and treat) growth problems in children

This is a problem that often bothers young parents: the size of their child.

If considered too small compared to the average, the child may have developed stunted growth.

Guest of

this Thursday, the pediatrician and endocrinologist at the Robert Debré hospital in Paris, Mélanie Amouyal, takes stock of this disorder, its detection, and details the treatment developed against this pathology. 

How to detect a growth problem in a child? 

Taken seriously, any growth retardation is monitored "from pregnancy" by the medical profession, explains the specialist.

If a baby is on average 50 centimeters at birth, he can still develop this pathology later.

This is why it is important "during all growth, and at least once each year between 2 and 3 years", to make an appointment with your pediatrician.

Because it is indeed the latter who will detect an anomaly and refer the parents to an endocrinologist. 

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As a benchmark, Mélanie Amouyal does however provide a few figures to reassure parents: "During the first two years, a child grows on average 37 centimeters (25 the first year and 12 the second). Then, this regularizes between 4, 5 and 6 centimeters per year until puberty, when there is a peak of growth again. " 

But if a problem is detected, the child will undergo "a biological assessment, including in particular a blood test, but also sometimes an X-ray of the left hand called X-ray of bone age, which shows the potential for growth".

"Late bone age [relative to the child's actual age] means there is greater potential for growth."

Nevertheless, the first sign of a disorder remains "a marked slowdown in growth. In this case, we must not wait."

What treatment? 

Because time plays against the young patient.

"The treatment can be started any time during childhood, can last until the end of growth, but its effectiveness will not be the same according to his age. So the ideal is [to start] around 7-8 years old. "

This treatment consists of daily injections of growth hormones via "pen syringes", such as those used for people with diabetes.

And Mélanie Amouyal clarified that these hormones are synthetic: exit therefore the risks of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), as in the health scandal which had killed 120 people in France from the 1980s. 

As to whether there may be other negative effects, the specialist mentions the possible appearance of "headaches, small allergies and abnormalities in the level of sugar in the blood".

If she does not deny that this treatment "is not trivial", she wishes to reassure: "Overall, the studies on side effects contradict each other, but nothing emerges very clearly."

The trick to estimating the height of your child as an adult

If it is very difficult to determine the size of a child in adulthood, Mélanie Amouyal nonetheless delivers to the microphone of

a benchmark to estimate it.

The formula is as follows: parents' height + 13 for a boy, -13 for a girl, all divided by two.

For a girl measuring one meter, whose father is 1m75 and mother 1m65, the calculation is therefore as follows.

175 + 165 = 340, 340-13 = 327, 327 ÷ 2 = 163.5.

The child should therefore be a little over 1m63 as an adult.

But beware, this is not an exact science, insists the pediatrician.

"It's a benchmark, the kid is supposed to be around that size."