OBJECTIVE:

 The purpose of the study was to assess skeletal maturation in children with generalized decreased skeletal age and compare it with the children having normal skeletal age.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

Hand wrist radiographs of 37 child patients (age group 3–14 years) were taken and skeletal age assessment was done with hand wrist radiograph of the left hand according to Greulich and Pyle method, based on which two groups were made, Group A – Control group (normal skeletal age) and Group B – study group (decreased skeletal age). Group A had a sample size of 20 and Group B, a sample size of 17. These were further divided into subgroups according to age: subgroup (A) – 3 to 6 years, subgroup (B) – 7 to 11 years and subgroup (C) – 12 to 14 years. Difference in the state of skeletal maturation in chronological age and estimated bone age of both the normal and diseased subjects were compared together with the help of one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)  and their significance by Tukey’s post hoc test, separately for each age group. Before analyzing the data by ANOVA, the homogeneity of variance was first tested by Bartlett’s test.

RESULTS:

 On comparing mean, chronological age and bone age of normal and diseased show no significant (p>0.05) change in age Group A and B, while Group C these differs significantly (p<0.01) and bone age of diseased were found significantly (p<0.01) lower than the Normal–CA, Normal–BA and Diseased–CA. It was noticed that chronological age and bone age of both the normal and diseased subjects increase as age increases, but the growth increments were found to be higher in normal than diseased children.

CONCLUSION:

The present study led to the conclusion that general skeletal growth was retarded in children with generalized decreased skeletal age in comparison to healthy child patients.