Validity of the Khamis-Roche method, relative to bone age, in Portuguese children and adolescents from 11 to 15 years.

OBJECTIVE: to validate maturity status classification, based on %PAH, relative to SA, in a sample of Portuguese children and adolescents of both sexes. METHODS: BA was measured by the Tanner-Whitehouse-3 method, the PAH and %PAH were estimated by the Tanner-Whitehouse-3 method (BA- PAH, % BA-PAH) and the Khamis-Roche method (KR- PAH, %KR- PAH) in 371 children (171 girls). Intraclass Correlation Coefficients and Bland-Altman plots were performance between BA-PAH / BA-%PAH and KR- PAH/%KR- PAH methods. Two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was made to evaluate the effect of sex and maturity status. RESULTS: The average mean differences between BA-PAH and KR-PAH was 0.2 ± 4.2 cm in boys and 0.6 ± 3.1 cm in girls (p > 0.05) and between BA-% PAH and KR-% PAH was -0.1 ± 2.1% in boys and 0.4 ± 1.8% in girls (p > 0.05). A high interclass correlation coefficient was higher than 0.91 for BA-% PAH and KR-% PAH. Early maturity status was related to negative differences between BA- KR PAH. CONCLUSION: KR % PAH presented a good agreement and might be a valid estimate of biological maturity status in average maturing children and adolescents.