Short stature refers to any person who is significantly below the average height for a person of the same age and sex.

The term often refers to children or adolescents who are significantly below the average height of their peers.

A growth chart is used to compare a child's current height and how fast he or she is growing to other children of the same age and gender (male or female). A measurement called standard deviation (SD) is used. If a child's height is more than 2 SD's below the average height, the child is thought to have short stature.

Many parents become worried if their children are shorter than most or all of the children around them. However, short stature is not necessarily a symptom or sign of a health problem. Two relatively short but healthy parents may have an entirely healthy child who is in the shortest 5%.

On the other hand, short stature may be a symptom caused by a medical condition. Because many of these conditions are treatable, the person should be examined by a health care provider. The rate of growth over time is important in determining the cause.

Short stature may be due to a number of medical conditions or problems, including:

• Growth hormone deficiency
• Chronic diseases such as congenital heart disease, kidney diseases, asthma, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, celiac disease, Cushing's disease, hypothyroidism, and diabetes
• Genetic conditions such as Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, Williams syndrome, Russell-Silver syndrome, and Noonan syndrome
• Bone or skeletal disorders such as rickets or achondroplasia
• Problems related to pregnancy, such as infections of the fetus before birth, poor growth of a baby while in the womb (intrauterine growth restriction), or born small for gestational age
• Panhypopituitarism
• Delayed puberty (causes temporary short stature, but children eventually grow to normal height)
• Precocious puberty
• Malnutrition

Short stature that has no medical cause (idiopathic short stature) can be due to:

• Family history of short stature (children are short but are expected to reach the height of one or both parents)
• Constitutional growth delay (normal growth until close to 12 months of age that slows afterward, puberty is delayed, adult height will eventually be in the expected range calculated from the parents' height)

This list does not include every possible cause of short stature.