Combined Skeletal Age using Hand, Elbow, and Pelvis X-Rays: A Pilot Study

Purpose: Knowing a patient’s skeletal age (SA) is important to treat diseases that are dependent on growth, such as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). A left hand XR is the most studied and applicable to both sexes and wide age ranges. Although no gold standard exists for determining SA therefore there are several radiographic (XR) methods to assess how much a growth a child has left. Determining SA using hand, elbow, and pelvis XRs is common practice in our pediatric spine clinic but there are no published studies that evaluate the combined use of all three XR …