TITLE:
Radiological Estimation of Age from Hand Bone in Sudanese Infants and Toddlers
AUTHORS:
Mohammed H. Karrar Alsharif, Ali Hassan A. Ali, Abbas Elbakry A. Elsayed, Abubaker Y. Elamin, Deya Eldin A. Mohamed
KEYWORDS:
Hand Bone Age; Infants; Toddlers; X-Ray
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Internal Medicine,
Vol.4 No.1,
March
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: Age determination is one of the most important
factors for identification. Unfortunately, births are not recorded regularly in
Sudan, especially in rural areas. However, identification of age is very
important for a variety of reasons, including identifying legal and criminal
responsibility, and for many other social events such as beginning a job,
marriage, retirement and joining the army. The study aimed to find the
reliability of using international methods to estimate bone age of people
through hand bone radiograph in Sudanese people by studying the reliability of
using hand bone age “the digital atlas of hand age” which depended on Greulich and Pyle
(GP) and Tanner and Whitehouse (TW2/3) methods in Sudanese people in exact group
of age, and to compare the hand
and wrist bone development between Caucasian and Sudanese people. The study was
conducted on 48 samples (26 males and 22 females) from the center of Sudan. The
study was made by conventional X-Ray taken from Sudanese newborn babies to 2
and 3 years old for males and females respectively. Those images were taken
mostly from the emergency and orthopedic outpatient departments. The ages were
grouped in the same ways and periods used in the atlas. So the criteria were
tested,
and the
outcomes were compared with international standards in the atlas of hand bone
age. There is evidence that skeletal maturation may vary between difference
ethnic and socioeconomic groups of children or among children living in various
geographical locations. It is found that there is reliability and applicability
of using the atlas in Sudanese people with considering that there might be mild
variations between Sudanese and Caucasian people’s hand and wrist bone
development in which Caucasian people bone growth was earlier than the Sudanese
people bones about 1 - 2 months.