Many years of experience with recombinant growth hormone (GH) treatment has shown how effective it is in improving adult height in children with short stature due to GH deficiency (GHD). For those with severe GHD or severe GH insensitivity the diagnosis is often clear, but for a number of short patients it is difficult to draw a clear line between mild GHD, partial GHD and idiopathic short stature. 1 There is consensus that diagnosing GHD in childhood is a multifaceted process requiring both clinical and auxological data, as well as biochemical testing and radiological imaging of skeletal maturity and visualising the pituitary size or possible malformation. 2 However, there is still no gold standard diagnostic test for GHD. The provocation tests available are generally non-physiological and invasive, and are subject to variability between different assays. There is a debate whether measurement of spontaneous GH secretion is

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BackgroundDiagnosing growth hormone deficiency (GHD) can be challenging; hence, prediction models on growth outcome from growth hormone (GH) treatment have shown to be useful. We aim to compare the accuracy of the more readily available KIGS (Pfizer International Growth Study) prediction model to the previously clinically validated Gothenburg model.MethodsPrepubertal children with GHD who started GH treatment at Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital between 2004 and 2016 were considered for the study. Exclusion criteria were short stature due to syndrome, chronic disease, oncology disease, or known bad adherence. Growth predictions were made according to the Gothenburg model and the KIGS model. Growth data from birth until one year after start of GH treatment were collected from medical charts. Predicted height and observed height were then compared. ResultsA total of 123 children, 47 girls (38%) and 76 boys (62%) were included, with a mean age of 5.71 (±1.81 SD) years at start of GH treatment. The Pearson correlation of predicted first-year growth versus growth outcome were r = 0.990 for the Gothenburg model and r = 0.991 for the KIGS model. Studentized residuals were 0.10 ± 0.81 SD and 0.03 ± 0.96 SD, respectively, for the models. The comparison between the two models showed r = 0.995.ConclusionThe Gothenburg model and the KIGS model are equally accurate at predicting height outcome from GH treatment for our study cohort. We therefore promote the use of either model in clinical settings.