Bone age is important and blind intervention is not advisable
2023-05-17
Experts say that although early and backward bone age may affect a child's final height, it is inaccurate and unscientific to determine adult height based solely on one bone age result. A bone age prediction can only reflect the bone maturity of a child at that time, and the growth and development of a child is a linear dynamic process with numerous influencing factors. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively evaluate and monitor the child's development level, hormone status, and nutritional status by a professional pediatric endocrinologist. Spring is the golden period for children to grow taller. In this past spring, many children have grown rapidly in height like bamboo shoots after a rain, while some children have not grown up yet. Therefore, many parents are hesitant to take their children to have a bone age test. The importance of bone age is also widely debated among parents. Some parents believe that bone age is not very useful, and their children's height is innate; Some parents believe that controlling bone age by managing weight, consuming fewer supplements and foods with short growth cycles, and using drugs to suppress bone age growth can help their children grow taller. So what role does bone age play in children's growth and development? Can suppressing bone age really make children grow taller? Bone age measurement requires scientific calculation to evaluate bone age, which is the age of bones. By determining the size, shape, structure, and changes in the relationship between specific parts of bones, we can understand the maturity of bones. Bone age is an important indicator that reflects the physical development status of children and assesses their developmental stages. The measurement of bone age is not complicated, as the child only needs to cooperate to complete one X-ray shoot of the left wrist joint. After taking bone age films, doctors usually evaluate them based on simple counting methods, atlas methods, scoring methods, or computer bone age scoring systems. "The counting method is to estimate the bone age by calculating the number of wrist ossification center." Zheng Rongxiu, chief physician of pediatrics in Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, introduced that this method is only applicable to children aged 3-7 years, and the error is large, so this method cannot be used alone for evaluation. At present, the main internationally used methods for evaluating bone age are the G-P map method and the TW3 scoring method. The atlas method compares the wrist X-ray of the subject with the standard X-ray atlas of the wrist (the standard atlas represents the average level of children of that age), and uses the most similar standard X-ray bone age as the subject's bone age. Due to the earliest and most widely used method being the "X-ray Atlas of Wrist Bone Development" designed and published by Americans Greulich and Pyle in 1950, this method is also referred to as the G-P imaging method. The G-P atlas method has become the most widely used bone age assessment method internationally due to its simplicity and speed, but the atlas used is based on samples of white European children. Due to racial differences and socio-economic environmental factors, the G-P map method cannot be applied to all populations and needs to be updated at any time with the development of society. Zheng Rongxiu pointed out that the subjective factors of the G-P map method are obvious, which can easily lead to a decrease in interpretation consistency and accuracy. In terms of scoring method for assessing bone age, the TW series scoring method is currently widely used, with European and North American children as reference objects, and the TW3 method is mainly used. Although the TW3 method is accurate, the process is complex,
Edit:qihang Responsible editor:xinglan
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