UNASSIGNED: The evaluation of skeletal age is an important factor in orthodontic planning to anticipate changes in growth, with the analysis of hand and wrist radiographs showing the degree of bone and facial growth potential. The objective was to evaluate the relationship between skeletal maturation of the hand and wrist and ossification of the midpalatal suture (MPS) in adolescents.
UNASSIGNED: A search was carried out in four databases such as Pubmed, Scopus, Science Direct and Embase were reviewed until December 13, 2022. The included studies were descriptive and comparative articles on the skeletal maturation of the hand and wrist and ossification of the midpalatal suture of patients aged 7 to 18 years. Two researchers carefully selected the articles evaluated and analyzed the different key topics related to the topic.
UNASSIGNED: Four articles were included in this study; According to the studies, it was found that the greater the degree of bone maturation there is an increase in the approximation of the SMP, especially in late stages, with high and positive correlations; Furthermore, there were greater evaluation results with the Fishman analysis method as opposed to the Hagg and Taranger and Björk methods. The critical limit stages in SMI7-9, a greater approach to the closure of SMP compatible with stage D-E was found. The completion of maturation in women occurs up to 2 years earlier than in men.
UNASSIGNED: Diagnostic evaluation methods using carpal analysis can be used for predictive evaluations of the maturation stage of SMP; However, the results were not absolute in all cases so they cannot be generalized.

UNASSIGNED: The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence regarding skeletal maturation in patients with cleft lip and/or palate (CL/P) and to investigate whether the skeletal maturation is delayed in these patients.
UNASSIGNED: Systematic review.
UNASSIGNED: Electronic and manual searches of scientific literature were conducted in 4 databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science). Cohort studies that compared the skeletal maturation of patients with CL/P with that of children without CL/P were eligible for inclusion. The quality of included cohort studies was assessed using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale.
UNASSIGNED: Patients of any sex and ethnicity with CL/P and children without CL/P were included in this systematic review.
UNASSIGNED: Difference in skeletal maturation between patients with CL/P and patients without CL/P.
UNASSIGNED: Thirteen retrospective cohort studies were included in this systematic review. Ten studies were considered of high quality and 3 were considered of general quality. The results of the included studies comparing skeletal maturation of patients with CL/P and children without CL/P were heterogeneous.
UNASSIGNED: Heterogeneity of skeletal maturation assessment methods, chronological age, sex, cleft type, and race may influence the final results of clinical studies on skeletal maturation in patients with CL/P. Overall, there is limited evidence to determine whether the skeletal maturation level of patients with CL/P is delayed compared to that of normal children. Further studies are needed to determine the skeletal maturation patterns in patients with CL/P.

Age estimation of living individuals has become a crucial part of the forensic practice, especially due to the global increase in cross-border migration. The low rate of birth registration in many countries, hence of identification documents of migrants, especially in Africa and Asia, highlights the importance of reliable methods for age estimation of living individuals. Despite the fact that a number of skeletal and dental methods for age estimation have been developed, their main limitation is that they are based on specific reference samples and there is still no consensus among researchers on whether these methods can be applied to all populations. Though this issue remains still unsolved, population information at a glance could be useful for forensic practitioners dealing with such issues. This study aims at presenting a scoping review and mapping of the current situation concerning population data for skeletal (hand-wrist and clavicle) and dental methods (teeth eruption and third molar formation) for age estimation in the living. Two hundred studies on the rate of skeletal maturation and four hundred thirty-nine on the rate of dental maturation were found, covering the period from 1952 and 2020 for a total of ninety-eight countries. For most of the western and central African countries there are currently no data on the rate of skeletal and dental maturation. The same applies to the countries of the Middle East, as well as the eastern European countries, especially as regard the skeletal development.

OBJECTIVE: To perform a systematic review with meta-analysis to answer the question: is the cervical vertebrae maturation index (CVMI) effective to replace hand-wrist radiograph (gold standard) in determining the pubertal growth spurt in patients undergoing bone growth?
METHODS: A search in three databases was performed, in which studies were selected that compared one of the two main assessment methods for cervical vertebrae (Hassel B, Farman AG. Skeletal maturation evaluation using cervical vertebrae. Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop 1995; 107: 58-66, or Baccetti T, Franchi L, McNamara JA Jr. An improved version of the cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) method for the assessment of mandibular growth. Angle Orthod 2002; 72: 316-23) to a carpal assessment method. The main methodological data from each of the texts were collected and tabulated after. Later, the meta-analysis of the correlation coefficients obtained was performed.
RESULTS: 19 articles were selected from an initial 206 articles collected. Regardless of the method used, the results of the meta-analysis showed that every article selected presented a positive correlation between skeletal maturation assessment performed by cervical vertebrae and carpal methods, with discrepancy of values between genders indicating higher correlation for the female gender (0.925; 0.878) than for the male (0.879; 0.842). When the assessment was performed without gender separation, correlation was significant (0.592; 0.688) but lower in the cases when genders were separated.
CONCLUSIONS: With the results of this meta-analysis, it is safe to affirm that both CVMIs used in the present study are reliable to replace the hand-wrist radiograph in predicting the pubertal growth spurt, considering that the highest values were found in female samples, especially in the method by Hassel and Farman.