Failure to Thrive

Abstract

Because many factors can affect physical growth of children at all levels of maturation, careful evaluation of each child is necessary to assure proper diagnosis and management. It is the physician's responsibility to decide whether poor growth results from an underlying disease which is not clinically evident or represents a purely normal genetic variation. Unless diagnosis reveals a specifically treatable disease, there is little hope for growth stimulation. Administration of growth stimulants should be avoided, since they stimulate closure of the epiphyses more readily than they effect linear growth.