Monitoring Infant Growth: Comparative use of WHO standards and French national reference curves

The WHO curves published in 2006 reflect the exact growth of infants who are exclusively breast-fed for at least 4 months. These curves are universal but not widely used in France. At 2-3 months, they have a much higher level than the curves of the Personal Child Health Record. The aim of our study was to evaluate whether the choice of the type of curve influenced the interpretation of infant growth and the advice given, and whether WHO curves could be used for all infants. Initially, 22 physicians retrospectively interpreted the WHO and Personal Child Health Record weight gain curves of 20 infants who were exclusively breast-fed. All of the curves were interpreted twice. In a second step, we drew the WHO curves from 0 to 3 months for the 151 infants monitored by the consultation. At 2 months, there is a very clear discordance in the interpretations of the French and WHO curves (weighted Kappa = -0.26 CI 95% [-0.62; 0.18]), contrasting with the satisfactory concordance of the WHO interpretations (weighted Kappa = 0.71 CI 95% [0.25; 0.89]) and Personal Child Health Record (weighted Kappa = 0.58 CI 95% [0.09; 0.81]) curves. By overestimating the weight gain during the first weeks, in one-third of the infants use of the French curves leads to either inappropriate suggestions of restrictions or their insufficient weight not being taken into account. Moreover, the weight gain at 2 3 months for 151 infants of all categories is within the limits of the WHO curves, without going below the percentile lines for the non-breast-fed infants, except premature babies. Broader use of the WHO curves could be proposed in order to optimize the care of infants, regardless of how they are fed. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.