is the bone age useful to determine the treatment plan?
A major skeletal effect of reverse-pull headgear is a forward movement of maxilla, via remodeling of the circummaxillary sutures. We hypothesized that an evaluation of bone age would help to determine the effective planning and optimum timing using reverse-pull headgear. Differences in the cephalometric measurements between the initiation of treatment and after 1 year of treatment were calculated from 60 Japanese patients in mixed dentition with skeletal Class III malocclusions. Bone age was appraised by the Tanner-Whitehouse 2 method using hand-wrist radiographs at the initiation of treatment. The control groups (mean chronologic age, male 10.3 years and female 9.6 years) were treated by lingual arch and/or chincup, and the reverse-pull headgear groups (mean chronologic age, male 9.7 years and female 9.4 years) by reverse-pull headgear. The forward movement of the maxilla and increase in the palatal length were larger in the bone age-based younger male reverse-pull headgear subgroup t
