Precocious puberty: auxological criteria discriminating different forms.

It may be possible to recognize different forms of precocious puberty at the first evaluation. In a group of 26 sexually precocious girls we used Bayley-Pinneau predicted adult height (P.A.H.) to discriminate patients with 'poor' or 'good' height prognosis. Patients with evidence of impaired height prognosis (P.A.H. < -1 SDS) (Group 1) were immediately treated with LH-RH analogs, while patients with unimpaired height prognosis (P.A.H. > -1 SDS) (Group 2) were followed without therapy. Two yr of treatment significantly improved P.A.H. in Group 1 patients, from a mean of -1.68 +/- 0.4 to a mean of -0.57 +/- 0.6 (SDS) (p < 0.01). After the 2 yr observation period, Group 2 patients showed no significant variation of P.A.H. (from a mean of 0.45 +/- 0.8 to a mean of 0.33 +/- 0.6). The retrospective analysis of the growth pattern changes in the two Groups seems to indicate that LH-RH agonist treatment improves height potential in girls with initial poor height prognosis and that girls with initial good height prognosis maintain an unimpaired growth potential.