Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom and in this episode I'm going to be

talking to you about failure to thrive. And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic,

you can follow along at zero to finals.com slash failure to thrive or in the development section

of the Zero to Fin finals pediatrics book.

So let's get straight into it.

Failure to thrive refers to poor physical growth and development in a child.

Fultering growth is defined in the 2007 Nice Guidelines on faltering growth in children

as being a fall in weight across one or more centile spaces

if their birth weight was below the ninth centaur, two or more centile spaces if their birth

weight was between the ninth and the 91st centile, and three or more centile spaces if their

birth weight was above the 91st centile.

Centile spaces are the distance between two centile lines on a growth chart.

The distance between the 75th and the 50th centile line is a centile space.

A weight that falls this distance is a drop across one centile space.

For example, if the initial weight of a child is plotted halfway between the ninth and the 25th centile line, and several months later is plotted halfway between the second and the ninth

centile line, they have dropped a full centile space.

Let's talk about the causes of failure to thrive.

Anything that leads to inadequate energy and nutrition can lead to failure to thrive.

The causes can be categorized as inadequate nutritional intake, difficulty feeding, malabsorption, increased energy requirements,

and inability to process nutrition. So firstly, let's talk about the causes of inadequate

nutritional intake. This could be maternal malabsorption if they're breastfeeding, iron deficiency anemia,

family or parental problems, neglect or inadequate availability of food, for example in poverty.

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