Reduction of Bone Assessments Necessary for the Skeletal Age Determination of Boys

Abstract

Abstract In this study, the skeletal ages of the individual bones comprising the wrist and hand were intercorrelated and correlated with the total-hand skeletal ages based on 30 osseous assessments of 273 boys 9 through 15 years of age. No intercorrelation between individual bones was less than .9456 (distal end of ulna and lunate bone) and no correlation of a single bone with over-all skeletal age was lower than .9718 (distal end of ulna). The wrist-hand skeletal age of an adolescent boy can be determined with a satisfactory degree of accuracy from the skeletal age of metacarpal IV alone, since the correlation of this bone with skeletal age of the total hand was .9960. Using the following four bones, the multiple correlation with the total hand was .9989: capitate, metacarpal III, proximal phalanx III, and middle phalanx III.