Children investigated for failure to thrive: where are they now?

: Failure to thrive remains a common problem accounting for a large number of referrals to paediatric clinics. Some children with failure to thrive undergo extensive investigations including a sweat test to exclude cystic fibrosis. Selecting a group of children who had a sweat test, we chose to compare weight centile data recorded at initial presentation with data collected at routine school-entry medical several years later. It was encouraging to see that most children improved their weight centile with time, regardless of whether a diagnosis had been reached.