The retrospective comparative analysis of physical development of middle school age children

Abstract

Objective: We determined the morphological indicators of 12-year-old schoolchildren in Lviv, established the differences between the anthropometric parameters of the children's population from other large cities of Ukraine, and assessed the trends in physical development changes over a long period. Materials and methods: According to the conventional methods of anthropometry, we examined 348 12-year-old schoolchildren (including 172 boys and 176 girls) studying at Lviv city general education institutions. Results: Gender peculiarities of morpho-functional development of 12-year-old schoolchildren in the large cities of Ukraine were revealed. They reflect the active endocrine remodeling of children, which is primarily inherent in the performance of girls. The values of individual anthropometric parameters, both among boys and girls, were determined to be significantly higher (p <0.05) than the National criteria (2013). At the same time, the height of Kyiv schoolgirls is smaller (p <0.05) against the national norms. During the analyzed period, pronounced accelerative processes were observed in the development of the 12-year-old children’s population in Kharkiv and Odessa, which indicates a certain dependence of the processes of growth and formation of the organism on the climatic and geographical conditions of habitat and the level of industrial development of the territory. The average statistical parameters of the basic indicators of physical development of Lviv schoolchildren are lower than the similar parameters of 12-year-old children in Poland. Conclusions: The obtained results of the study confirm our previous assumptions about the necessity to work out the regional standards for anthropometric indicators of middle age schoolchildren at the regional level and recommend to use them in the assessment of children's health by family doctors and pediatricians. In the future, it is planned to expand the list of major cities in Ukraine selected for our study, and increase the number of sample groups of 12-year-old schoolchildren, which will increase the level of statistical reliability of the results.