Consensus on the principles of physical development monitoring in children, possible or not?

Abstract

Regular, long-term anthropometric follow-up is one of the fundamental methods of assessing the child’s health and well-being. However, there is still a lot of inconsistency in anthropometric practices and standards that may have a negative impact on clinical practice (e.g. delay in diagnosing children with growth or feeding disorders, genetic and metabolic syndromes). The paper discusses the principles of basic measurements: length/height, body weight, circumferences: head, chest and arm. Attention was also paid to the use of professional anthropometric equipment. Appropriately performed measurements allow the calculation of weight-height indices, which define nutrition disturbances (overweight, obesity and malnutrition), and also constitute the basis for conducting specialised diagnostics. In 2011, a group of experts recommended standards of body length/height, body weight, head circumference and body mass index developed by the World Health Organization for children up to 5 years of age. In 2013, nationwide reference values for weight, height and body mass index for children aged from 3 to 6 years were published and accepted as valid (OLA project). They complemented previously developed percentile charts for children aged 7–18 years (OLAF project). The paper proposes to adopt uniform standards of anthropometric measurements and to initiate a discussion in the paediatric community on the acceptance of common growth charts for the basic anthropometric measurements.