WEDNESDAY, March 27 (HealthDay News) -- Parents often worry when their child, especially a son, is much shorter than average. But as long as there is no medical cause, parents can rest easy, experts say.Writing in the March 28 New England Journal of Medicine, two pediatric endocrinologists describe a scenario pediatricians see all the time: Parents bring in their 11-year-old son because he's substantially shorter than his classmates, and his growth seems to have slowed in recent years.
Their concern is reasonable, said Dr. David Allen, co-author of the article and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
In the vignette, Allen and Dr. Leona Cuttler describe a boy whose height was in the third percentile at age 9 years. (That means he was shorter than 97 percent of boys his age.) But his growth rate slowed further, so that he is now in the first percentile for height.
