Evaluation of Skeletal Maturation by Comparing the Hand-Wrist Maturation and Cervical Vertebrae Maturation in a portuguese population

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the correlation between chronological age, cervical vertebral maturation and hand-wrist skeletal maturity indicators in a Portuguese children sample. Materials and Methods: Two hundred and eighty five contemporary hand-wrist and lateral cephalometric radiographs of Portuguese subjects were randomly selected and analyzed. The subjects’ age ranged from 7 to 16 years old and all them were within the circumpubertal period. The cervical vertebral skeletal maturation was assessed using the method developed by Baccetti and co-workers. The hand-wrist skeletal maturation was assessed using the method developed by Grave and Brown. These two methods and the chronological age were correlated using the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient analysis. Results: The cervical vertebrae maturation was significantly correlated with the hand-wrist skeletal maturation (male rs = 0.806, female rs = 0.803). Strong correlations were found between the cervical vertebrae maturation and chronological age (male rs = 0.778; female rs = 0.788) and between the hand-wrist maturation and chronological age (male rs = 0.820; female rs = 0.847). Conclusions: These results suggest that cervical vertebrae skeletal maturation method and hand-wrist skeletal maturation method have a strong statistical correlation in Portuguese subjects. Therefore is appropriate the use of the cervical vertebrae skeletal maturation method in daily orthodontic practice when treating Portuguese patients, thus avoiding additional radiation exposure. In the same way, the strong correlation between chronological age and hand-wrist skeletal maturation indicators suggest that within certain limits chronological age might be used to determine the skeletal stage of a given subject.