Contents:
- Medical Video: Measuring up with a Bone Age Study
- What is bone age?
- How do you calculate bone age?
- Benefits of carrying out bone age checks
Medical Video: Measuring up with a Bone Age Study
Bone age is an indicator of a person's frame and biological maturity. This is clearly different from someone's age which is calculated using the date of birth.
Bone age is often requested by pediatricians and endocrinologists to make comparisons with the age of a person to diagnose a disease related to the development and growth of a child's height. So how, yes, how do you know the age of a person's bones? Check out the full explanation below.
What is bone age?
Bone age - bone age, or skeletal age, is one of the checks to determine bone maturity or the age of a person's bones. By knowing the age of the bone, it will be measured the size of the maturity level of a person's frame, namely how far the person has increased in the development of the skeleton.
Age of bone is not necessarily the same as someone's actual age. Bone age can be used to predict a person's growth period and predict height when adult. This difference between the age of the bone and the actual age of a person does not always imply an indication of a problem.
If the age of a person's underage bone is real, then the person's growth period will be longer so that eventually the height of an adult can be normal.But if the age of bone is older than the actual age of a person, then most likely a person's growth in adulthood will be less than average.
This bone age calculation is also used to estimate the age of a person in conditions where their birth certificate is not available so that their age cannot be known. Missing birth data is a big problem in parts of the world. Well that is why, examination of bone age is used to give an estimate of a person's age to be more accurate.
How do you calculate bone age?
Bone age is measured in several years. Hand and wrist radiographs are the most commonly used way to calculate bone age.
How to calculate bone age using radiographic techniques can be done using an X-ray in the area of the left wrist, hand, and finger. A person's bones found on X-ray images will later be compared to X-ray images in the standard atlas of bone development, which are based on data from a large number of other people's bones of the same sex and age.
Benefits of carrying out bone age checks
Bone age checks can be used to monitor bone growth and determine treatment. So this age of bone can also help diagnose the underlying disease, such as:
- Diseases affecting the levels of hormones involved in growth, such as growth hormone deficiency, hypothyroidism, precocious puberty, and the adrenal gland.
- Genetic growth abnormalities, such as Turner syndrome.
- Orthopedic or orthodontic problems are determined based on the time and type of treatment such as surgery, binding, and so on.
- In addition, bone examinations performed on children can also be used to predict how long the child will experience a growth period, when the child enters the puberty phase, and the child's high estimates later.
