Abnormal Body Size and Proportion

Pathologic short and tall stature lie beyond the normal variants of adult human height. Identifying pathologic growth involves utilizing growth curves appropriate for a person's ethnic, familial, and nutritional status. Allowances must also be made for parental height, the impact of chronic disease or medication, the possibility of constitutional delay, or acceleration of maturation. When it is established that a person is truly short or tall for age considering all other factors in the medical and social history, an accurate diagnosis of the cause is essential to providing good patient care, including prognosis, anticipating and treating complications, and providing accurate genetic counseling. The classification of the body habitus as proportionate or disproportionate with the use of anthropometric measurements and the recognition of the deficiency or acceleration of growth as pre- or postnatal can help identify the cause of the pathology. Here we discuss this algorithm to recognizing pathologic overgrowth or short stature and identify some common causes of abnormal body size and proportion.