| Summary: | Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the skeletal and chronological age of adolescent Bulgarian female and male patients with а transverse maxillary deficit in order to establish the level of consistencies and discrepancies within and between the two sexes.
Material and methods: The data included lateral cephalometric radiographs of 74 patients, among whom 51 girls and 23 boys. The patients’ ages ranged between 9 and 17 years, with an average age of 13.2 years (±2.24). The assessment of skeletal maturation followed the cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) methods of Baccetti et al. and Lamparski. Comparison of skeletal and chronological age was performed for patients before age spurt and after age spurt within the female and male groups. The two sexes were compared in view of consistencies and discrepancies between chronological and skeletal age.
Results: The results showed a statistically lower percentage of consistencies and a higher percentage of discrepancies in patients before age spurt for both sexes. Vice versa, in patients after age spurt consistencies, constituted a statistically higher percentage for both sexes. As a whole, the female patients had a slightly higher percentage of consistency (54%) between chronological and skeletal age than the male patients (48%), but the difference of 6% was not statistically significant p = 0.73. The discrepancies towards a higher skeletal age constituted 83% of the total number of discrepancies among the female patients and 75% of the discrepancies among the male patients. The difference of 8% was not significant, p = 0.56. The mean chronological age of the female and male patients in each CVS stage was very similar.
Conclusion: In patients with incomplete skeletal growth, skeletal age corresponds to a higher level of maturation than predicted by the patients’ chronological age in both female and male patients. The two sexes show similar trends of accelerated skeletal maturation without statistically significant differences. Our results differ from previous findings of the existence of sexual dimorphism in skeletal age maturation.
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