Estimates of body height in adult inpatients.
OBJECTIVE
Different estimates of body height are broad applied in clinical practice, although its accuracy and precision are few known. In order to clarify the applicability of these estimates, concerned with the hypothesis that it is of too few accuracy and precision, the authors compared patient's actual height to their self reported height (SRH), to the value estimated by the equation proposed by World Health Organization (WHO-EQ) and total arm span (TAS).


METHODS
334 adult inpatients had their measured height (gold standard) compared to each estimate through paired t-test. Proportion of patients who had unacceptable errors (difference > 5 cm) is described.


RESULTS
Mean difference between actual height and SRH was 1.9 cm, 3.3 cm for WHO-EQ and 5.7 cm for TAS. However, even accepting a 5 cm difference in relation to actual height, the percentage of patients who had errors bigger than so was 16.9% for SRH, 41.9% for WHO-EQ and 51.2% for TAS. A new equation could be obtained from this sample, but, despite methodologically adequate, it wrongly predicted height in more than 5 cm in 27.8% of patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Tested estimates appeared to be little reliable to be applied to patients confined to bed due to lack of precision and accuracy.
Beghetto
Mariur Gomes
MG
Nutrition Support Team and Nutrology Medical Service, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Brazil. mbeghetto@hcpa.ufrgs.br
Fink
Jaqueline
J
Luft
Vivian Cristine
VC
de Mello
Elza Daniel
ED
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000886:Anthropometry / Q000379:methods*; D001132:Arm / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D001827:Body Height; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity