ESPE Abstracts

Small for gestational age (SGA) is an important cause of short stature in developing countries like India.

Results: 97 children between 2-4 yrs of age who were born SGA were studied over six months and those whose height was below the third percentile on WHO growth charts were classified as short.

The inter-group statistical comparison of distribution of categorical variables were tested using Chi-Square test and inter-group statistical comparison of continuous variables is done using independent sample t test. Underlying normality assumption was tested before subjecting the study variables to t test. In the entire study, the p-values less than 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant. All the hypotheses were formulated using two tailed alternatives against each null hypothesis (hypothesis of no difference). The entire data was statistically analyzed using SPSS ver 21.0, IBM Corporation, USA.

The prevalence of short stature in SGA children in our study is 20.6%. The mean weight (1.16 SDS, p-0.001) and mean head circumference (2.19 SDS, p-0.005) of the children with short stature was significantly less than that of the children without. The age group of 2.6-3 years showed 33.3 % of short stature children compared to other age groups in our study. Lower socio economic status contributed to 27 % of short stature children as compared to 16.3 % and 18.2 % of middle and upper socio economic status respectively. The various antenatal factors contributing to short stature in our study are maternal age, parity and pregnancy induced hypertension. The gestational age of the mother and the mode of delivery of the child also contributed to short stature with 24.2 % for gestational age > 40 weeks and 21.8 % for normal delivery respectively. Our study shows that longer duration of breast feeding and proper supplementary feeding reduce the number of short stature children. The distribution of mean paternal height, distribution of mean maternal height and distribution of mean mid-parental height did not differ significantly between group of cases with short stature and group cases without short stature (p-value>0.05).

Conclusion: Thus it is imperative to recognise failure of catch up growth in children due to these causative factors and provide timely referral of the child to a paediatric endocrinologist.

Acknowledgement: This study was funded by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)