Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017;21(3):262-265.
doi: 10.1007/s12603-016-0761-7.

Validity of Knee-Estimated Height to Assess Standing Height in Older Adults: A Secondary Longitudinal Analysis of the Mexican Health and Aging Study

C García-Peña  1 , M U Pérez-Zepeda
Affiliations

Validity of Knee-Estimated Height to Assess Standing Height in Older Adults: A Secondary Longitudinal Analysis of the Mexican Health and Aging Study

C García-Peña et al. J Nutr Health Aging. 2017.

Abstract

Objective: The main objective was to test the validity of height estimated by knee height in Mexican older adults, as a surrogate for standing height.

Design: Cohort study.

Setting: Data were drawn from the first and third waves of the Mexican Health and Aging Study.

Participants: Included participants were community-dwelling 50-year or older adults with measured height at baseline and in follow-up. Subjects with a lower limb fracture in the follow-up were excluded.

Measurements: Main measurements were baseline standing height and 11-year follow-up and knee-estimated height in follow-up. Population specific equations were used to estimate standing height from knee height. Comparisons between baseline standing height and knee-derived height were done with simple correlations, limits of agreement (Bland-Altman plot) and Deming regressions.

Results: A total of 136 50-year or older adults were followed-up for eleven years, with a mean age of 60. There was a positive correlation between knee-estimated height and baseline standing height of 0.895 (p<0.001) for men and of 0.845 (p<0.001) for women. Limits of agreement for men were from -6.95cm to 7.09cm and for women from -6.58cm to 8.44cm.

Conclusion: According to our results, knee-estimated height could be used interchangeably with standing height in Mexican older adults, and these results might apply also to other populations.

Keywords: Body height; body mass index; geriatric assessment; validation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Authors declare not to have conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatter Plot Comparing Current Knee-Estimated Height with Baseline Standing Height Stratified by Sex
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bland-Altman Plot of the Difference of Measurements (y-axis) with the Average of Measurements (x-axis) * a) Men b) Women * Gray area corresponds to 95% confidence intervals of the difference of the measurements
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Tanner JM. Normal growth and techniques of growth assessment. Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1986;15(3):411–51. - PubMed
    1. Nayak S, Edwards DL, Saleh AA, Greenspan SL. Systematic review and meta-analysis of the performance of clinical risk assessment instruments for screening for osteoporosis or low bone density. Osteoporos Int. 2015;26(5):1543–54. doi: 10.1007/s00198-015-3025-1. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Auyeung TW, Lee JS, Leung J, Kwok T, Leung PC, Woo J. Effects of height loss on morbidity and mortality in 3145 community-dwelling Chinese older women and men: a 5-year prospective study. Age Ageing. 2010;39(6):699–704. doi: 10.1093/ageing/afq101. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chumlea WC, Roche AF, Steinbaugh ML. Estimating stature from knee height for persons 60 to 90 years of age. J Am Geriatr Soc. 1985;33(2):116–20. - PubMed
    1. Mendoza-Nunez VM, Sanchez-Rodriguez MA, Cervantes-Sandoval A, Correa-Munoz E, Vargas-Guadarrama LA. Equations for predicting height for elderly Mexican Americans are not applicable for elderly Mexicans. American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council. 2002;14(3):351–5. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.10029. - DOI - PubMed