Hey, Doc - the kid's overweight, O.K.? That is the message of a
new study that looked at the medical records of more than 60,000
children and found that most of those who weighed too much were not
given that diagnosis by a pediatrician.
Writing in the January issue of Pediatrics, the researchers
reported that weight-related diagnoses were given to only 10 percent
of the overweight patients, 54 percent of the obese ones and 76
percent of the severely obese. The lead author is Lacey Benson of
the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.
The researchers said that especially with patients who were
overweight but not yet obese, doctors might be missing a good chance
to intervene.
For the study, the researchers looked at electronic medical
records for patients ages 2 to 18 in a Cleveland health system over
a period of more than eight years. Using the weight and height
entered for each child, they determined when the body mass index was
too high, and they recorded whether a diagnosis had been entered.
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