Use of Growth Hormone for Non—Growth Hormone Deficient Children-Reply

In Reply. —The comments of Dr Diller are very interesting. We expect that the findings reported in our study are likely to be applicable to other analogous conditions involving difficult medical decisions. To put our findings in perspective, the use of hypothetical case scenarios (as in our study) provides insight into medical decision making that can be a critical foundation for developing normative data and building consensus. Contrary to some interpretations in the popular press, we see our data as indicating that physicians are thoughtful and careful in decisions about growth hormone, use multiple criteria in considering growth hormone treatment, and, in this sense, may be considered somewhat restrained in recommendations to use growth hormone.