Most growth problems in children are missed during routine checks (ESPE, 10 September 2013)

ESPE response to Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) press release: “Use of Electronic Health Records Associated With Higher Rate of Detection of Growth Disorders in Children” (work of Ulla Sankilampi, of Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland, and colleagues).

This is an important study, which shows that the vast majority of children’s growth problems are not picked up during routine checks.

Professor Gary Butler, Chairman of the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Clinical Practice Committee said:

“This is very important work as it shows that 8 out of 9 children who have a health problem which presents with poor growth are being missed during routine checks.  That’s a huge amount, for example, it would mean that across the EU we are missing the diagnosis of health problems in over 60,000 children*. It is already known that screening children for growth problems is a highly cost effective use of healthcare resources”.

Full press release

*Based on total EH population of 500m. This represents around 7,500 children in a country of approx. 60m, such as the UK, Italy or France.