Maturation of cervical vertebrae and chronological age in children and adolescents

In maxillary orthopedics and related areas, it is essential to determine patient growth peak in order to provide timely diagnosis and treatments. This requires the use of biological indicators that enable children and adolescents to be assigned to maturation stages. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between cervical vertebrae maturation stages and chronological age in children and adolescents. In this study were evaluated 93 lateral cranium radiographs of 6- to 17-year-old patients who visited the Postgraduate Maxillary Orthopedics Clinic at the School of Dentistry at Universidad del Zulia. Two examiners made independent assessments of cervical vertebrae maturation stage using the method described by Baccetti et al. For each stage, descriptive statistics for chronological age were evaluated, classified according to sex. In addition, parametric and non-parametric tests were performed in which p <0.05 was considered significant. Mean age of the children and adolescents studied was 9.6 years, with standard deviation 2.5 years. The correlation coefficient (r= 0.771) certified a high positive correlation between bone maturation and chronological age. This correlation coefficient was highly positive for girls (r=0.858) and moderately positive for boys (r=0.688). The model obtained explains 59.4 % of the variation between bone maturation and chronological age, evidencing an average age increase of three years when maturation stage increases by approximately 1 year. The results suggest that although the degree of covariance between chronological age and maturation stages was highly positive in this study, chronological age does not allow bone maturation to be determined precisely, since it may be influenced by genetic and/or environmental factors.