MICROSOFT (R) OFFICE EXCEL-BASED WORKSHEET PROGRAM FOR RAPID CALCULATION OF WEIGHT-FOR-AGE (WA) AND HEIGHT-FOR-AGE (HA) Z-SCORES IN THAI PEDIATRIC POPULATION (THAI-Z)

摘要

Weight-for-age and height-for-age z-scores (WAZ and HAZ) are commonly used anthropometric tools for assessing a child's growth, development, and nutritional status. These parameters are also widely used in research studies to compare the effects of management, medications, and disease progression on height and weight in studied children, as these scores can minimize variation caused by ethnicity and genetic background. To calculate these scores, exact weight and height measurements must be manually calculated using a formula to adjust for age (month and year) and gender (boy or girl) within the same study population. In this study, we set forth to develop a user-friendly Microsoft Excel-based program (THAI-Z) for calculating WAZ and HAZ using normative reference data obtained from the National Growth References for Children Under 20 Years of Age (1999), Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. The results using data from 400 Thai pediatric thalassemic patients and 381 normal Thai children to calculate HAZ and WAZ found 100% accuracy using the THAI-Z program, as compared to 99.68% from manual calculation. Moreover, manual calculation required more time than THAI-Z program to achieve measurement of HAZ and WAZ (11.3 vs 5.4 seconds per sample, respectively). This program can be used in both routine clinical evaluation and clinical research settings not only in Thailand, but also in neighboring Southeast Asian countries where children have anthropometric measurements similar to those of Thai children.