Abstract
FRY1 recently criticized the Tanner and Whitehouse (TW) method of assessing skeletal maturity2 on the grounds that it shows excessive fluctuation in the velocity of maturation. He stated that, in a child whose chronological age advances 6 months, the method may show no advance of skeletal age or, alternatively, a skeletal advance of 23 months. Fry seems to have assigned TW ratings only to the plates in the Greulich–Pyle Atlas, so it is not at all clear how he arrives at the criticism, nor, indeed, precisely what is implied. I am able, however, to supply actual data on the mean rate of maturation of a population of children and on the variation between individual children rated in successive years by the TW method.
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References
Fry, E. I., Nature, 220, 496 (1968).
Tanner, J. M., Whitehouse, R. H., and Healy, M. J. R., A New System for Estimating Skeletal Maturity from the Hand and Wrist, with Standards Derived from a Study of 2,600 Healthy British Children, Parts 1 and 2 (International Children's Centre, Paris, 1962).
Greulich, W. C., and Pyle, S. I., Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist, second ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1959).
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MARSHALL, W. Individual Variations in Rate of Skeletal Maturation. Nature 221, 91 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/221091a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/221091a0
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