Health status of adopted children from China

Objectives: to improve the knowledge on the health status of the children adoptedfrom China. Patients and methods: cross-sectional retrospective study of 60 adopted Chinese girls who were routinely evaluated after their arrival (mean age of 15.5 months) in the Pediatrics and International Adoption Center of Zaragoza (Spain) between 2001 and 2005. The collected data were compared with the disclosed ones in the clinic group of 192 adopted Chinese children (98% girls) routinely evaluated after their arrival (mean age of 15.7 months) in the International Adoption Clinic of Boston (U.S.A.) between 1991 and 1998. Results: respect to the clinic group of adopted Chinese children evaluated in U.S.A. during the 90s, the clinic group of adopted Chinese girls in our country displayed lower rates of growth delay, developmental delay (p = 0.0309), latent tuberculosis infection (p = 0.0472), intestinal parasitism, hepatitis B infection, elevated lead levels (p = 0.0466), anemia and unsuspected important medical diagnoses before the adoption. Conclusions: the results suggest that the quality in micronutrients of the feeding, the medical care, the hygienic and health controls and the psicoaffective stimulation that these children have received during their institutionalization has notoriously improved in the last quinquennium. Nevertheless, the adoptive families and the pediatricians that take care of these children after their arrival, must be aware that the story of a normal clinical exploration and negative results of laboratory tests in the preadoptive medical records performed in China, do not guarantee the absence of infectious diseases or other significant problems of health.