[Development of hand-wrist bones of 14 year-old adolescents. II. Standard of bony age for girls].
OBJECTIVE
To study the current development of hand-wrist bones of adolescents in China, and establish special forensic bony age standard for estimating 14 years of criminal responsible age in female adolescents.


METHODS
One hundred and ten healthy girls aged from 13 years and 9 months to 14 years and 3 months in Lengshuijiang district of Hunan province were enrolled in this study. X-ray films of their left hand-wrists were taken dorsaventrally, and 15 sites on the wrist x-ray films were examined and measured under standard condition. The development grade was confirmed by maximal percentage to establish a method to estimate the bony age, which was then checked by single blind method.


RESULTS
Development grade of the radius, the middle third phalanx and the fourth phalanx was partially closed (> 2/3), and the rest was wholly-closed with existence of the epiphyseal line. The development grade of the middle third phalanx and fourth phalanx was different between the younger group (< 14 years, partially closed, > 2/3) and the older group (> 14 years, mostly closed with existence of only epiphyseal line). The cross diameter of the osteoepiphysises were wider than that of all the diaphysises. The confirmed accuracy (in 30 girls) was 83.3%.


CONCLUSIONS
Our study seemes to be feasible in establishing the estimation standard for bony age determination. The standard established by developmental metaphysis and authropometry may be particularly helpful in forensic practice for estimation of accurate criminal responsible age in adolescents.
Li
Kai
K
Department of Forensic Science, Basic Medical College of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, China. lk_ln@126.com
Ye
Ke
K
Zhang
Zhen
Z
Wang
Jian-Wen
JW
Ye
Long-Yu
LY
Zhang
Qin-Chu
QC
D000293:Adolescent; D000365:Age Determination by Skeleton / Q000379:methods*; D004838:Epiphyses / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D005260:Female; D018732:Forensic Anthropology / Q000379:methods*; D050276:Hand Bones / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D011884:Radius / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D012015:Reference Standards; D014953:Wrist / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*