Should we treat children with idiopathic short stature? Workshop held in St.-Paul-de-Vence, France, April 18-19, 1999

The use of growth hormone (GH) to treat short children who are clearly GH-d eficient is now well accepted. However, GH treatment of short children who have no currently recognizable abnormalities in their GH-insulin-like growt h factor I axis remains controversial. Whether such children with so-called idiopathic short stature (ISS) should be treated with GH was the subject o f an international workshop held in St.-Paul-de-Vence, France, in April 199 9. This article summarizes the issues discussed at the workshop, including the definition of ISS, ethical and hearth-economic aspects of treatment, re sults from clinical trials and surveillance studies, and the use of predict ion models in aiding treatment decisions.