Background and aims: Different estimates of body height are broad applied in clinical practice, although its accuracy and precision are few known. In order to clarify the applicability of these estimates, concerned with the hypothesis that it is of too few accuracy and precision, the authors compared patient's actual height to their self reported height (SRH), to the value estimated by the equation proposed by World Health Organization (WHO-EQ) and total arm span (TAS).
Methods: 334 adult inpatients had their measured height (gold standard) compared to each estimate through paired t-test. Proportion of patients who had unacceptable errors (difference > 5 cm) is described.
Results: Mean difference between actual height and SRH was 1.9 cm, 3.3 cm for WHO-EQ and 5.7 cm for TAS. However, even accepting a 5 cm difference in relation to actual height, the percentage of patients who had errors bigger than so was 16.9% for SRH, 41.9% for WHO-EQ and 51.2% for TAS. A new equation could be obtained from this sample, but, despite methodologically adequate, it wrongly predicted height in more than 5 cm in 27.8% of patients.
Conclusions: Tested estimates appeared to be little reliable to be applied to patients confined to bed due to lack of precision and accuracy.