Idiopathic short stature (ISS) refers to extreme short stature that does not have a diagnostic explanation (idiopathic designates a condition that is unexplained or not understood) after an ordinary growth evaluation.

In 2003 Eli Lilly and Company offered a more precise definition of ISS when the pharmaceutical company submitted clinical trial data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requesting approval to advertise their brand of growth hormone for the treatment of ISS.

[2] They proposed a definition of a height more than 2.25 standard deviations below mean, roughly equal to the shortest 1.2% of the population.

[4] There is some evidence that hormone treatment may not result in a significant improvement in psychosocial functioning.

There is some ethical and economic concern whether such treatment would merely shift discrimination to the next most effected percentile.