Growth indicators in orthodontic patients. Part 2: Comparison of cervical bone age to hand-wrist skeletal age. Relationship with chronological age

Abstract

Aim The purpose of this study was to investigate therelationship between hand-wrist skeletal age, chronologicalage and cervical skeletal age as assessed by lateralcephalometric radiograph,Materials and methods Lateral cephalometric and lefthand-wrist radiographs of 393 Caucasian children from 8 to18 years old were evaluated. On the hand-wrist radiographsaverage values of the children's skeletal age as described bySchopf (1978), based on the classification of Bjork (1972),Grave and Brown (1976) were used. Cervical vertebral boneage also was depicted, using the method described by Mito,Sato, and Mitani. Pearson correlation coefficients ® andregression analysis were calculated to assess the linearrelationship between chronological, cervical bone and handwristskeletal age.Results The cervical skeletal age correlated significantly withboth the chronological and the hand-wrist skeletal age foreach gender. However, the correlation coefficient betweencervical skeletal age and hand-wrist skeletal age for bothfemales (r=0.81) and males (0.76) is higher than that betweencervical skeletal age and chronological age (females r=0.73;males r=0.72). In addition, regression analysis indicates thatthe relationship between cervical skeletal age and hand-wristskeletal age is stronger than the relationship between cervicalskeletal age and chronological age for both sexes.Conclusion Cervical skeletal age reflects skeletal statusbecause it can approximate hand-wrist skeletal age, which isconsidered to be the most reliable method for measuring thedegree of maturity.