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Online ISSN : 2349-8080 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorinchiefijcrbp@gmail.com |
Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Nigeria
Anthropometric measurements have important applications in every aspect and stage of the human life. It may be used to tell-tale the health or otherwise during pregnancy of the mother and the unborn baby. During childhood, it can be used to measure growth, health and nutritional status. In adult life, they may depict level of nourishment and may connote some disease states. The records are required in drugs prescription and in designing and choosing the right hospital equipment to use for a patient. Anthropometric measurements are also required in the design of houses, human wears and most industrial designs of products for human uses are based on average anthropometric records of the particular society for which they are meant. A particular anthropometric index however, may vary widely between apparently normal individuals of the same sex, age and race when varying from one societal setting to the other and sometimes within same society based on some factors. These differences often make it difficult to interpret anthropometric measurements as normal or abnormal. What are the determinants of these differences? How should these variations be managed by health workers and other users? The present review intends to present some of these differences in various human categories and suggest in a compact, yet comprehensive form, how to deal with these differences in order to optimize the use of the records.
