title: Percentiles and mean values for neck circumference in Turkish children aged 6-18 years.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To provide neck circumference (NC) percentiles and mean values for Turkish children and to investigate their significance in clinical and epidemiological use.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data were obtained from a cross-sectional screening study; DAMTCA II (Determination of Anthropometric Measurements in Turkish Children and Adolescents) in which 5481 subjects from 17 primary, secondary and high schools were included. NC percentiles were produced using the LMS method, and NC was compared with other parameters which define body fat distribution.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The smoothed NC curves of 3rd, 5th, 15th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 85th, 90th, 95th and 97th percentiles were constructed by age and gender. The descriptive characteristics of collected data were presented as mean (SD: standard deviation) and median (Min-Max: minimum-maximum) to provide detailed information other than smoothed values. The most prominent finding of this study was that the NC of boys was greater, but not significantly higher, than that of girls until the age of 12 but later a prominent increase in the NC of boys is observed compared with girls. We compared obese and non-obese children in the 6-10, 11-13, 14-18 age groups, NC was found to be an important parameter to define obesity.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study provides NC percentiles, means and medians values and analyses their significance in obesity evaluation in clinical practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Erciyes University Faculty of Medicine, Kayseri, Turkey. mazici@erciyes.edu.tr
authors.forename: Mumtaz M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Mazicioglu
authors.forename: Selim
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kurtoglu
authors.forename: Ahmet
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ozturk
authors.forename: Nihal
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hatipoglu
authors.forename: Betul
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Cicek
authors.forename: Hasan Basri
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Ustunbas
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D017677:Age Distribution; D050218:Body Fat Distribution; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D009333:Neck / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D009765:Obesity / Q000175:diagnosis*; D012016:Reference Values; D017678:Sex Distribution; D014421:Turkey