Nutritional Considerations in Failure to Thrive Follow-up

Updated: Feb 22, 2021
  • Author: Simon S Rabinowitz, MD, PhD, FAAP; Chief Editor: Jatinder Bhatia, MBBS, FAAP  more...
  • Print
Follow-up

Further Outpatient Care

Children with failure to thrive (FTT) need continued follow-up care to observe their growth parameters using the appropriate growth charts.

A randomized controlled trial of multidisciplinary home visits among children with failure to thrive found mild improvement in some parameters compared with children with failure to thrive who only attended the same clinic. However, children without failure to thrive from the same neighborhoods were significantly taller, heavier, and had better arithmetic scores at age 8 years than children with failure to thrive with or without home visits. [79] An older randomized controlled trial of specialist health visitor interventions failed to show any improvements in weight or developmental scores but did find that visited patients were more compliant with appointments and less likely to be admitted to a hospital. [80]