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Bone Age

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Abstract

Bone age is a measure of skeletal maturity, evaluated with an X-ray radiograph of a child’s left hand and wrist. Bone age assessment has two main purposes: first, it allows for assessment of sexual maturity, and second, it can allow for estimation of future growth potential and expected adult height. As such, its primary applications relate to the assessment and workup of disorders of growth and/or puberty. This chapter describes the anatomical and physiologic principles underlying bone age, factors that generally lead to delayed or advanced bone ages, methods of bone age determination, common clinical scenarios in which bone age assessment may be useful, and the use of bone age for height prediction.

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Correspondence to Dayna McGill .

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McGill, D. (2021). Bone Age. In: Stanley, T., Misra, M. (eds) Endocrine Conditions in Pediatrics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52215-5_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52215-5_36

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52214-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52215-5

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