Short stature

Short stature
Classification and external resources
Specialty	endocrinology
ICD-10	E34.3
ICD-9-CM	783.43
DiseasesDB	18756
MedlinePlus	003271
eMedicine	ped/2087
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Short stature refers to a height of a human being which is below typical. Whether a person is considered short depends on the context. Because of the lack of preciseness, there is often disagreement about the degree of shortness that should be called short.

In a medical context, short stature is typically defined as an adult height that is more than two standard deviations below the mean for age and gender, which corresponds to the shortest 2.3% of individuals. In developed countries, this typically includes adult men who are shorter than 166 centimetres (5 ft 5 in) tall and adult women who are shorter than 153 centimetres (5 ft 0 in) tall. By comparison, the median or typical adult height in these populations (as the widely abundant statistics from these countries clearly state) is about 177 centimetres (5 ft 10 in) for men and 164 centimetres (5 ft 5 in) for women.

Shortness in children and young adults nearly always results from below-average growth in childhood, while shortness in older adults usually results from loss of height due to kyphosis of the spine or collapsed vertebrae from osteoporosis.

From a medical perspective, severe shortness can be a variation of normal, resulting from the interplay of multiple familial genes. It can also be due to one or more of many abnormal conditions, such as chronic (prolonged) hormone deficiency, malnutrition, disease of a major organ system, mistreatment, treatment with certain drugs, chromosomal deletions, inherited diseases, birth defect syndromes, bone structures fusing earlier than intended or many other causes.

Human Growth Hormone (HGH) deficiency may occur at any time during infancy or childhood, with the most obvious sign being a noticeable slowing of growth. The deficiency may be genetic.

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