In recent years, parents have paid more and more attention to the problem of children's growth and height, especially after going to kindergarten and primary school, seeing the height of children of the same age, they will be anxious to do various examinations, calcium supplementation, eating maintenance products to promote height development, and even --- to measure bone age.
Bone age is the age of the bones, but not bone density, the two are not the same.
Bone age is the biological age of a person, and in layman's terms, it is the age of human bone growth.
The development process of each bone in a person has a continuous and staged, and the age of the bones can accurately assess the growth and development level and maturity of children, and it is also of clinical significance for the diagnosis of endocrine diseases.
Bone age is generally taken with orthostatic X-rays of the left hand and wrist, which is evaluated by atlas or scoring method, and there is a standard bone age atlas.
So, what is the significance of monitoring bone age?
Bone age can predict the height potential of children, of course, you can also measure the bone age, according to the analysis of the results, adjust the diet, work and rest and other states, so that the height to maximize the potential.
Bone age can not only determine the range of children's physiological age, endocrinologists will also use bone age examination to determine short stature, height is too high, growth retardation, precocious puberty, late puberty, growth hormone deficiency and other endocrine diseases.
Bone age has its own development law, generally fluctuating up and down with the actual age of no more than 1 year. If the difference is too large, consider the question of early and late length.
For example, children who practice gymnastics are not high in gymnastics, but when selecting gymnasts, they will select children who are not tall according to the results of bone age.
If you don't take the sports route and want your child's height to reach its maximum potential, you need to delay bone age growth. A certain amount of intervention should be carried out from the aspects of weight control and diet adjustment.
Under what circumstances do I need to measure bone age?
Bone age do not blindly detect, when the child's height growth is too fast or too slow when the detection is meaningful, the adjustment of bone age is expected to play the maximum expectation value, not can increase the height indefinitely, height is an important indicator of children's long-term health, but it is not infinite growth, not parents want to let the child grow taller he can grow taller, need to be based on a multi-faceted assessment, combined with their own factors have a maximum expected height value.
Heredity plays a decisive role in the factors that affect height, which is why many young people now choose tall people when they get married.
The criterion for judging the growth of children's height is a universal "growth curve", and children at each stage have standard height, maximum and minimum values at each stage, as long as there are no other adverse symptoms in the normal range, they can not be tested.
Bone age reflects physiological maturity, children under 6 years old are still in normal development, if there is no special situation, it is not recommended that children under 6 years old take bone age tablets.
However, if the child's high body height is 2 grades higher than the genetic height, it is best to do a bone age test, in which case the possibility of early growth is relatively large, which can lead to precocious puberty or adrenal gland disease. If the bone age is backward and the height is short, it is necessary to be wary of growth retardation caused by diseases such as growth hormone deficiency.
Is bone age check safe?
If the doctor says that the child may have pneumonia and needs to have a chest X-ray, most parents will not refuse, and the radiation dose of the bone age test is about one-tenth of the chest X-ray, which is safe.
Although it is safe, it does not mean that you can test it at any time if you want to, one is to measure the bone age alone once or twice, which does not fully explain the height of your child, unless you regularly test it every year, it has the significance of monitoring. On the other hand, often measuring bone age will actually cause psychological pressure on the child, third, the child's height is determined by a variety of factors, not that you measure the bone age several times, the child can grow a few centimeters taller, so we do not emphasize, do not overdo, not routine shooting for the measurement of bone age, but if there is a need for diagnosis and treatment of related diseases, do not refuse.