Routine Height Measurements Are Often Wrong, Researchers Find
Who doesn’t recall the anticipation when, as children, the doctor or nurse measured our height and then announced it at our annual checkup?
Well, it seems that doctor’s offices aren’t doing so well with this ritual of childhood, something parents value as an important indicator of a child’s health. Improbable as it may seem, about two-thirds of children may be improperly measured--sometimes by as much as 4 1/2 inches, according to new research.
Nursing researchers, led by Terri Lipman, a nursing professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and Karen Hench, president of the Pediatric Endocrinology Nursing Society in Gaithersburg, Md., checked the height measurements of 660 kids in primary-care practices in Albany, N.Y.; Galveston, Texas; Miami; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Providence, R.I.; St. Louis; and St. Petersburg, Fla.
Although the average bad measurement was off by about three-quarters of an inch, “that’s still a lot when you consider children normally grow 2 1/2 inches a year,” Lipman said.
The researchers said that overestimations of a child’s height could miss growth problems and that low estimates could send them to specialists when no problem exists.
Inaccurate techniques and bad equipment were to blame for the inaccuracies, researchers said. In many cases, the measuring arm attached to a medical scale wasn’t fixed at a proper right angle; and because there was nothing to lean up against, the kids were kind of “scooching down,” Lipman said. Some readings were elevated because the children were wearing sneakers or hats. Unreliable readings also came from placing babies on sheets of paper and measuring the space between marks made at their heads and feet.
The researchers found only 30% of kids were measured properly. But after training doctors and nurses in proper technique and introducing proper equipment, that rate improved to 54%.
The researchers plan a follow-up to pinpoint what kinds of diagnoses are being missed and which kids are being referred inappropriately for nonexistent growth problems.
