Short stature

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Height/weight chart

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.

Idiopathic short stature; Non-growth hormone deficient short stature

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).

• A child may be shorter or taller than the average child of the same age.
• A measurement called standard deviation (SD) is used to compare the height of different children.

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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:

• Constitutional growth delay. Children are small for their age but are growing at a normal rate. Puberty is often late. These children continue to grow after most of their peers have stopped. Most of the time, they will reach an adult height similar to that of their parents.
• One or both parents is short. Short but healthy parents may have a healthy child who is in the shortest 5%. These children are short, but they should reach the height of one or both parents.

Short stature may be a symptom of a number of medical conditions or problems, including:

• Bone or skeletal disorders such as rickets or achondroplasia
• Chronic diseases such as congenital heart disease, kidney diseases, asthma, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, Cushing's disease, hypothyroidism, and diabetes
• Genetic conditions such as Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, Williams syndrome, Russell-Silver syndrome, and Noonan syndrome
• Growth hormone deficiency
• Infections of the fetus before birth
• Malnutrition
• Poor growth of a baby while in the womb (intrauterine growth restriction) or small for gestational age

This list does not include every possible cause of short stature.

Review Date: 07/26/2010
Reviewed By: Neil K. Kaneshiro, MD, MHA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.

A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org).