Causes and Underlying Factors of Faltering Growth Among Infants

Altered growth velocity in infants has been traditionally described by the term (failure to thrive ) . More recently the preferred terms are faltering growth ,slow weight gain or undernourishment as failure to thrive has been associated with negative connotations of parents failing in their job as careproviders.

The expression 'to falter' means to hesitate. Faltering growth is an observation,without value judgement, of slower than expected rate of growth along an infant's previously defined growth curve.

Faltering growth is a common pediatric problem with many untoward effects . More studies showed that children who failed to thrive in infancy are lighter and shorter at school age with adverse intellectual outcomes (corbett and drewett,2004)(Natale etal., 2014). Weight faltering in the first months of life is particularly associated with these adverse effects.

Infants with faltering growth also have a higher prevalence of feeding problems (Young etal., 2013).Growth failure is more common during infancy than during any other stage of life because programmed growth rates and nutritional needs are high (