Abstract:
Background: Height is important in measuring body size assess nutritional status, measure basic energy requirements, standardize measures of physical capacity and adjusting drug dosage. However, height in elderly is difficult to measure because of changes in posture due to aging and abnormalities of the spine in which estimate of body height has to be derived from other reliable anthropometric measurements, such as arm span (AS), demi span (DS) and knee height (KH).
Objective: The study aimed to develop equation for predicting of height from arm span, demi span and knee height in Ethiopian Elderly
Methods: Cross-sectional multi-stage sampling has been employed on Ethiopian Elderly aged 60 years and older in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Data was collected by anthropometric measurement. SPSS version 20 Minitab and Microsoft office Excel were used for data analysis. Assumptions of linear regression model has been checked, multiple linear regression model was fitted to develop height prediction formula from independent variables, Bland-Altman plot has been employed to see the agreement between actual height and predicted height.
Result
The equations developed from arm span demi span and knee height were:
For male, From Arm span, Height (cm) =12.14+0.915*arm span-0.0372*age, from demi span, Height (cm) =11.79+1.8095*demispan-0.0034*age, and from knee height, Height (cm) =43.76+2.3307*kneeheight-0.0054*age
For Female, from arm span, Height (cm) =20.85+0.8385*armspan+0.0127*age, from demi span Height (cm) =23.62 +1.6498*demispan+0.0067*age, from knee height, Height (cm) =49.00+2.2283*knee height+0.0621*age. Height predicted using these equations was in good agreement with measured height and no significant difference were found between the mean measured height and predicted height in both gender (p>0.05).
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Conclusion: A strong positive association between height and arm span, height and demi-span and height and knee height was observed in both gender. This indicates that this predicted height can be used as a proxy for height when a height measurement cannot be obtained.