Bone age

I'm Dr. Ruth, board-certified pediatric endocrinologist and obesity medicine specialist.

Today, as part of our podcast, I'm going to talk to you about one of the most common and most misunderstood tests in pediatric endocrinology, the bone age x-ray.

I often meet families who arrive with a report that says something like, the bone age is 11 years, or the predicted adult height is 5 feet 6 inches.

Understandably, that number can feel definitive.

Parents may hear it as a deadline, a diagnosis, or a promise about their child's final height.

But a bone age is none of those things by itself.

It's an estimate of skeletal maturity.

It's the one piece of a much larger growth evaluation.