[Assessment of physical development of children and adolescents. Part II. Children and adolescents aged 6-19 years--national references or WHO recommendations?].

AIMS: 1. Comparison of cut-off points for selected anthropometric parameters in children and adolescents between reference values for Polish Institute of Mother and Child (IMD) and WHO growth

METHODS: The accepted reference system were IMD reference values and the differences for mean (50th) and 3rd and 97th percentile for height and weight were calculated for boys and girls. The differences between BMI units for overweight (85th) and obesity (95th) percentile were compared. Warsaw 1980 reference values were used to estimate secular trend influence on differences between IMD and WHO cut-off points in stunting adolescents.

RESULTS: Comparison of height-for-age showed the largest differences with positive values relative to 3rd percentile in the Polish population. Boys aged 16 years attain 4% (6.2 cm) of 3rd percentile height value and girls aged 14 years 2.3% (2.8 cm). Secular trend of the Polish population did not influence the differences between IMD and WHO values in stunting adolescents. The differences for 85th and 95th percentile of BMI were most pronounced in prepubescence and the largest values were for boys and girls aged 10 years.

CONCLUSIONS: 1. National height-for-age references should be used for growth assessment in Polish school-aged children and adolescents especially in stunting adolescents identified in puberty. 2. WHO norms for BMI, can be used as a tool for identifying overweight and obesity in epidemiological studies in Poland and for international comparisons. 3. The usefulness of WHO norms for clinical evaluation of overweight and obesity should be discussed among experts.