Evaluation and development of a bone age assessment method in patients with Down syndrome

Resumo

The objective of this paper was to evaluate the applicability of the method developed by Caldas to measure the vertebral bone age of Brazilians suffering from Down syndrome. A database comprised of 57 case records of individuals with this syndrome, both male and female, with ages ranging between 5 and 18 years, was used for this purpose. These records had lateral cephalometric radiographs and radiographs of hand and wrist, all of which had been obtained on the same date. There were 48 other records of individuals who did not suffer from Down syndrome. The Tanner and Whitehouse (TW3) method was used to perform the hand and wrist radiographs for obtaining bone age. The Caldas method was employed on the lateral cephalometric radiographs in order to obtain the vertebral bone age. From the information acquired on bone age, vertebral bone age and chronological age, it could be concluded that there is a statistically significant difference between the three ages for both the male and the female control group and for the female Down syndrome group. Therefore, this method was employed only on male Down syndrome individuals. Based on the results, a formula was developed to obtain the bone age for Down syndrome individuals.