Introduction
Contact your doctor or health-care practitioner if your child is significantly shorter than most children his or her age, if you notice a decrease in his or her
growth rate, or if the child has stopped growing.
Follow-up
The doctor or health-care practitioner will monitor the child's growth pattern.
- For children younger than 3 years, checkups may be scheduled for every three months to measure height and weight.
- For older children, height and weight measurements should be obtained every six months.
Outlook
The prognosis for persons with normal variant short stature is excellent. For children with growth hormone deficiency, treatment with growth hormone replacement therapy typically results in a height consistent with the child's genetic potential, so long as therapy begins five years before the onset of puberty.