To make fun of a short-heighted person is the worst a person can do. However, this is not something to be mocked on. It is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.
People often ask people with dwarfism if they eat okay and the answer they get is always yes. They do eat fine but there are other factors that don’t allow the body to grow properly. It is not always the lack of nutrition or taking less food that causes the body to not grow in a normal manner.
Parents often get worried in their children’s childhood when the height of their kids doesn’t grow as they expect it to and make the child eat more than it is needed. However, the major cause of dwarfism is something else. To understand dwarfism in detail, let’s find out what it is.
What is Dwarfism?
The best child specialist in Islamabad says that it is a health condition that doesn’t allow the human body to grow more than 147 centimeters approximately. This can happen due to multiple factors and the topmost factor is genes.
Most of the children born with dwarfism have children of average height. Children mostly show delays in the development of mortar skills. The intellectual development of these children is fine but controlling the movements of the head or neck becomes a struggle.
Major Causes of Dwarfism
Dwarfism usually occurs in the kids whose parents are of average height and it happens as soon as the baby is conceived. The genetic mutations occur as soon as the egg is fertilized by the sperm. There is no reason as to why this mutation occurs. There are fifty percent chances for a baby to suffer from dwarfism if one of the parents is already a dwarf.
Early Signs and Symptoms of Dwarfism
The characteristics and the signs that you need to look for during the childhood of your baby are,
- The appearance of a large head
- A big forehead
- Bent/Bowed legs
- Small hands and feet
- Normal length trunk
- Disproportionate short arms and legs
- Loose ligaments causing double-jointed arms and legs
- A flat face
- Flat bridge of the nose
Having a short height doesn’t only mean that you have small hands, feet, and a small stature but there are a number of issues that come along with dwarfism. During childhood, these can be,
- A backward curve in the lower spine is observed causing pain
- Must strength be lost and the child needs extra support for neck and spine
- Nasal passages are narrowed that causes breathing issues and sometimes insomnia
- The legs that are initially straight start to get bowed at soon as the child starts to walk
- The child has a smaller size of foremen magnum this is the place where the spinal cord begins
- Infections start to occur in the ears, because of the narrowing of eustachian tubes that lead from the ears to the throat
Treatment Options
As long as the treatment is concerned, there is no cure for dwarfism. There is no role of the growth hormone in causing dwarfism so there is nothing that can be done to the hormones to fix the growth. The major treatment options that are suggested to the parents of the kids are,
Surgery
Surgery is only advised to fix the nervous system by relieving the pressure and this is usually done at the base of the skull or by removing the adenoids to open the airways that are closed.
Dental work
This is done just to change the shape of the gums or the teeth and ensure dental health.
The majority of infants born with dwarfism have average-sized siblings. The development of mortar abilities is usually delayed in children. These children’s intellectual development is fine, but managing head and neck movements becomes difficult.
Support from all the other medical experts can help greatly. If you are a parent and are seeing the early signs of dwarfism, then you need to get checked by experts like neurologists, pediatricians, and geneticists. These doctors can make you understand the main issues and reasons behind dwarfism, as to how it is caused, what causes it and how it is inherited, and what an early diagnosis can do to your child.
Scientists all over the world are trying to provide the best treatment for dwarfism. There is an effort being put to create a medicine but the making of the medicine is in its initial trials.
Conclusion
Dwarfism is a serious issue and a genetic condition that can occur to anyone. Most of the time the reasons are the genes of the parents but the real reason behind this growth disorder is still not revealed.
If you are a parent and are seeing the initial signs of dwarfism in the kid, it is important that you take the kid to a genetic counselor. These are the doctors that are both qualified as counselors and genetics.
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