When Children and Adolescents Are Discharged from the Hospital the Parents

Essay

When children and adolescents are discharged from the hospital the parents may still provide substantial care, such as the insertion of a feeding tube through the nose and down the esophagus into the stomach. It is difficult for parents to know how far to insert the tube, especially with rapidly growing infants. It may be possible for parents to measure their child's height and from that calculate the appropriate insertion length using a regression equation. At a major children's hospital, children and adolescents' heights and esophageal lengths were measured and a regression analysis performed. The data from this analysis is summarized below: r = 0.995, = 11.476 + 0.181H
a)For a child with a height one standard deviation above the mean, what would be the predicted esophageal length?
b)What proportion of the variability in esophageal length is accounted for by the height of the children and adolescents?
c)From the information presented above, does it appear that the esophagus length can be accurately predicted from the height of young patients? Provide statistical evidence for your response.