[Bone age: when how why]

The determination of the bone age is an evaluation method of a child's growth and maturation without including his theoric age, height or weight. Nevertheless, several practicians try to obtain the most precise maturation data, which are unreachable with actual methods, neglecting the evaluation given by the hand and wrist X ray. Several informations of bone maturation, morphology, and also mineralization, are given by X ray images allowing the diagnosis of a delay or an advance child's height. We will resume in this article, the bone age indications, and several methods and data given by the most important one, which's the left hand and wrist X ray