Assessment of Adaptation of Growth Curve in less than two years old The Children Referring to Health-Therapeutic Centers with world Growth Standards

The World Health Organization (WHO) released two sets of child growth standards as an international tools for growth assessment. According to studies, about 43% of children less than 5 years with the growth and survival of about 9% of children are underweight. This study is designed to evaluate different growth (weight, length and head circumference) children were aged zero to two.
The present descriptive-analytic study has been performed in longitudinal approach. Among children referred to 14 urban health- therapeutic centers, 280 healthy children were selected using census method, so as to have at least six times referral during a total of two years. Data were collected from household records using a researcher-made questionnaire, in which validity and reliability had been previously proven. Data were analyzed.
From a total of 280 participants, 133 cases (47.5%) were male and 147 (52.5%) female. Generally, during the referral months, all the three growth parameters including weight, height and head circumference had statistically meaningful difference with children's gender. But, growth rate did not show meaningful difference with mother's age, type of delivery, birth order and breast feeding. The results also revealed that growth different aspects such as weight, height and head circumference were normal in 73.9% of children.
Based on findings of the present study, it seems that a constant reference growth curve is not optimum for the whole country. Hence, more specific growth curves can be designed, based on different geographic areas and diverse ethnicity, and as a guideline impart to health-therapeutic centers for being revised and inserted necessary changes every few years.