Talk:Dwarfism/GA1

GA Review

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A few comments:

No section on how common this condition is.
I remember a while back when treatment first became available with growth hormone one of the associations of dwarfism was up in arms as they saw this as a potential end to dwarfism and their association.

--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:47, 25 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect your memory is faulty and you are thinking of concern about prenatal testing and subsequent elective abortion, not growth hormone use. GH only makes hypopituitary children tall enough to be "not short". When used in other conditions, it changes height a much smaller amount. Because of this it is not used widely for children with bone dysplasias.alteripse (talk) 13:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Initial review

In general I believe the article has improved a lot in a few months; however it still lacks important info on the disorder. To give some order to my thoughts I would order my comments following the GA criteria. My greatest concerns are with its broad coverage of the topic.

Well written: I feel it is well written; I knew nothing about the theme and understood it quite well.

Factually accurate: The article is quite referenced and I would say that the quality of the references is medium-high. They would probably have to be improved for the article to become a FA but good-enough for GA

Most of the references are from websites; which are not usually considered reliable-sources but from high quality organizations such as mayo clinic or other. Review articles from peer-review journals or textbooks are preferred by Wikipedia:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles) and would greatly enhance the quality of the article; although at the moment they are not critical.
During most of the article a reference is given for each paragraph and in some places for individual sentences; however I feel that the classification section lacks some references.

Neutral, stable and ilustrated: No problems from my point of view.

Broad in its coverage-organization of the info: My main problem with the article is regarding this criterium. The article lacks important info on the disease which does not permit to have an overall image of it (The GA criterium states: "it addresses the main aspects of the topic"). Compliance with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)is a necessity to cover all the important sections in a disorder article. Not present sections are pathophisiology, prevention-screening, prognosis and epidemiology. Additionally I think some sections should be reorganized to comply with this guideline.

Classification: It should also include a line on proportionate and disproportionate; since this is also a way of classifying the disorder.
Causes: While in the first line it talks about two main causes (achondroplasia and pituitary dwarfism) it later talks about acondroplasia and two other (Growth hormone deficiency and Spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita). This is an important inconsistency: no reason is given on why these two are important. Additionally some of the content on the 3 causes I believe would be more suitable for a pathophisiology section since it talks about the mechanisms on why the disease occurs. What I would do is to create a section where different causes (2 most important? 4 most important?) are only mentioned and maybe some info given on the prevalence of each one and a pathophisiology section with their mechanism (How these 2 or 4 causes produce the disease?)
Pathophisiology (see comment above)
Prevention: Is there any way of preventing it? Are there screening programms to early identify it and treat it? (Some info is already in the diagnosis section)
Epidemiology: How common is it? Are there prevalence figures? Does its prevalence vary around the world?
Prognosis: What is the prognosis for people with the disease. Some lines about death rates-age expectancy are needed.
Society and culture: I would integrate the cultural references and terminology as subsections since the terminology section is mainly about "social use of the term". I also feel the cultural references sections is wayyyyyy too long: Almost half of the article length is on cultural references. Maybe it could be summarized and a subarticle created as is done in many articles (See for example Huntington's disease)

Without a broader coverage of the topic in the lines proposed I believe the article does not comply with the GA criteria. I would not be around for a week; so I will leave this time for any editors to make changes in the article and when I am back I will take a look at any improvements made and perform a more in-detail review if issues have been solved. I am sorry for the bad news since I have been following the educational assigment this article is part of from the distance and overall it has done an amazing work; as has this article and its main editors. Best regards.--Garrondo (talk) 14:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some x rays. Have spoken with these people. If you ask them they may let you use them. http://radiopaedia.org/cases/achondroplasia--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:05, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]