Fifteen children with chronic renal failure from early infancy who did not require renal replacement therapy were followed for 3 years. Chronic renal failure was defined as a serum creatinine at or above 1 mg/dl for the entire 1st year of life. These patients were treated conservatively with diet and supplements of sodium bicarbonate and sodium chloride, calcium and vitamin D. Erythropoietin was given to 5 patients. Neither nasogastric nor gastrostomy tube feeding was used, and none of the patients received recombinant human growth hormone. We analyzed length, weight, and head circumference at 3, 12, 24, and 36 months of age. All three variables displayed a significant drop in the first 3 months, but remained stable for the whole observation period thereafter. At the age of 3 years, the patients' mean values of length, weight, and head circumference standard deviation score were -1.96, -1.37, and -1.07, respectively. Height velocity during the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd year was 22.2, 10.9, and 7.6 cm per year, respectively. The first two figures and the cumulative height velocity are significantly better than those from a large cohort of chronic renal failure patients collected by the European Study Group for Nutritional Treatment of Chronic Renal Failure in Childhood; here the corresponding figures of height velocity were 12.3, 8.3, and 7.6 cm per year. Median serum calcium, phosphate, parathyroid hormone, and albumin levels remained within normal limits for the entire study period. Therapy-resistant hyperparathyroidism occurred in 1 patient and radiological signs of renal osteodystrophy in 4 patients. Kidney length, as measured by ultrasonography, showed almost no growth.