Assessment of Bone Age in Prepubertal Healthy Korean Children: Comparison among the Korean Standard Bone Age Chart, Greulich-Pyle Method, and Tanner-Whitehouse Method

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To compare the reliability of the Greulich-Pyle (GP) method, Tanner-Whitehouse 3 (TW3) method and Korean standard bone age chart (KS) in the evaluation of bone age of prepubertal healthy Korean children. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Left hand-wrist radiographs of 212 prepubertal healthy Korean children aged 7 to 12 years, obtained for the evaluation of the traumatic injury in emergency department, were analyzed by two observers. Bone age was estimated using the GP method, TW3 method and KS, and was calculated in months. The correlation between bone age measured by each method and chronological age of each child was analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient, scatterplot. The three methods were compared using one-way analysis of variance. RESULTS: Significant correlations were found between chronological age and bone age estimated by all three methods in whole group and in each gender (R2 ranged from 0.87 to 0.9, p 0.01). CONCLUSION: The KS, GP, and TW3 methods show good reliability in the evaluation of bone age of prepubertal healthy Korean children without significant difference between them. Any are useful for evaluation of bone age in prepubertal healthy Korean children.