Assessment of various anthropologic methods for estimation of the height of persons over 65 years of age

: The height measurement of people older than 65 years of age is limited in may cases by alterations of the vertebral column, which is why the determination of the body mass index for the evaluation of the nutritional status may be very imprecise. Formulae have been developed based on the height of the knee or the distance between the knee and the external malleolus, for estimating the height. With this study we wish to contrast the estimated height using these formulae with the height obtained in standing people older than 65 years of age. We studied a total of 202 patients, assessing the height based on the different methods of estimation, as well as using the body mass index. When analyzing the results, we found that there were no significant differences between the average height estimated from the height of the knee or the distance from the knee to the malleolus, and the average height obtained by diet measurement, and that the height estimated from the height of the knee has a greater average relative error (0.43) than the height estimated using the knee to malleolus distance (0.08). The obtained results show us that the height assessment of people older than 65 years of age should always take place by measuring them while standing, and in those subjects in whom this is not possible, the height will be estimated using one of the two formulae, as both are useful in our environment, although we recommended using the estimate based on the knee malleolus distance as this is simpler.