Evaluation of the growth percentiles of children with congenital heart disease

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlation between anthropometric measures of children with congenital heart disease with percentiles that represent their growth indicators. Anthropometric evaluations of 135 hospitalized children with congenital heart disease were performed in a hospital specialized in cardiac diseases in Fortaleza, CE, Brazil. For the growth evaluation, percentiles of height by age, weight by height and weight by age were calculated. Children's average age was 4.74 months (+ 3.78) and 66.7% of the children were male. The medians of the three percentiles presented values below percentile 10, indicating a high proportion of values considered of risk. The subscapular thickness presented positive correlation with the three percentiles. The values of percentiles studied indicated growth delay.