Use of the new US90 standards for TW-RUS skeletal maturity scores in youths from the Italian population

Recently, 1997, Tanner and co-workers provided a new scale converting TW-RU S standard maturity scores to skeletal age for European North American yout hs (US90), The aim of the present study was to test if the accuracy of TW-R US bone age assessments in the Italian population could be improved by eval uating the estimates obtained with this new scale in comparison with other standards (UK60: original British series, B70: Belgian series and S80: Span ish series). 1,831 hand-wrist radiographs (Italian healthy subjects aged fr om 8 to 16.8 years) were evaluated. The US90 reference values are resulted the most suitable TW-RUS standards. Therefore, it seems useful to update th e reference values of TW-RUS SMS in Italian youths, using this new scale.