Standards of TW3 skeletal maturity for Chinese children

Abstract
This study included 17 401 normal Han urban children aged 1–20 years from five cities in China in 2005. The skeletal maturity scores were assessed by the Tanner–Whitehouse 3 (TW3) method, and the smoothed centiles curves of scores (TW3-Chinese RUS and TW3-Chinese Carpal) were calculated using the LMS method. The skeletal maturity of the Chinese is approximately the same as Europeans in childhood, but the extent of TW3-RUS skeletal maturity advance in puberty and the ages of complete maturity of TW-Carpals are evidently more advanced in the Chinese.