[Height percentiles of children at 6 to 11 years of age in the area of Lazio]. / I percentili della statura di bambini laziali da 6 a 11 anni.

BACKGROUND: In this paper we present growth height standards obtained by an auxological study on a primary school population of central Italy (Lazio), in the 1991-1992 and 1992-1993 school-years. METHODS: 4,175 children were included in the study: 2,024 females and 2,151 males, aged from 6 to 11 years. The sampling rate corresponds to more than 98% of the total primary school-population of the areas mentioned. The statistical analysis of the collected data was carried out by the Dipartment of Statistics of the University of Rome, using the widely available statistics packages STAT-GRAPHICS and SAS. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The analysis of height mean and standard deviation showed an increasing trend of height related to age, without significant differences by sex. The mean heights for females and males were practically the same in each age class. Height variance increases with age, too. This fact necessitates the use of the weighted regression technique to evaluate the functions that express the height growth trend. The relationship between height and age is linearlike and almost coincides for the two sexes. The height percentiles were calculated and the relative curves were developed, based on the distribution of normalized residuals. The centile curves confirm that there are no significant differences in the growth trends for both sexes and therefore the lines are overlapping. Substantial differences exist only in the end centiles (3th and 97th) and age extremes (6 and 11 years), possibly because of the small number of subjects.

[Clinico-epidemiologic considerations on 533 jaundiced newborn infants treated with phototherapy]. / Considerazioni clinico-epidemiologiche su 533 neonati itterici sottoposti a fototerapia.

The authors have conducted a clinical and epidemiological study on 533 newborn infants with marked jaundice treated with phototherapy. They have considered the incidence of jaundice in relation to sex, etiology, gestational age and weight at birth. The authors have also evaluated the minimum, maximum and mean duration of phototherapy of different groups of newborn infants with hyperbilirubinemia. Finally an estimation of initial, peak and final serum bilirubin concentration has been conducted together with an estimation of hourly increases and decreases of this concentration during phototherapy.