Word: dwarfism
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This syndrome only recently achieved the distinction of a medical name - deprivation dwarfism. To treat its victims doctors simply take them away from their homes - and it appears that even the institutional tenderness of a hospital can snap emotionally starved youngsters into a spurt of growth...
...normal babies, cranial sutures (the spaces between the bones that make up the skull) are wide at birth and gradually narrow over the years. By the end of childhood the sutures close. But when a stunted child is being treated for deprivation dwarfism-and grows rapidly as a result-the sutures tend to widen instead. Usually, this is an ominous sign of rising fluid pressure within the skull, perhaps from a brain tumor...
...Marie A. Capitanio and John A. Kirkpatrick of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children followed deprivation-dwarfism patients over a period of months, carefully comparing X rays of the children's skulls with those of more normal children. They report that the widening sutures are far from being warnings of trouble. While the Philadelphians are still not certain, they believe that the children's widening sutures are being expanded by the youngsters' healthy, growing brains...
...this work is necessary, says McKusick, because to treat or prevent dwarfism it first must be clearly defined. That is not as easy as it sounds. Beyond the rough classification of midgets as people of short but otherwise normal body build, and dwarfs as having some other physical abnormality in addition to short stature, McKusick lists 20 different conditions as causes of subnormal growth. Among the conventioneers, he found at least one representative of almost all the types, and some who appeared to fit no known category, suggesting that the classification table will now have to be extended...
...gets about 75,000 of these glands, mostly from pathologists exploring the skull in postmortem examinations. The agency supplies the Hopkins with extracts from the glands. It takes the hormone from 150 or more glands to treat one child for a year. For victims of the commonest type of dwarfism, achondroplasia, marked by short limbs, large heads and "scooped out" noses, no hormonal or other treatment is effective...