No abstract

A total of 704 girls and 753 boys, all healthy, from 3 to 18 years of age, from Tokyo and its suburbs, were radiographed on the left hand and wrist in 1986. Their RUS (TW2) skeletal maturity was estimated, the 50th-centile skeletal maturity scores were obtained, and the smoothed RUS maturity curves were determined applying the cubic spline function to the 50th-centile scores. On this maturity curve the score at each 0.1 year of chronological age was obtained and allocated as a given RUS skeletal age. This set of scores and ages we termed the TW2-J RUS, i.e. the Japanese TW2 RUS maturity standard. Comparing this RUS standard with the British standard, the Belgian, the southern Chinese, and the northern Indian, it became clear that Japanese children's RUS skeletal maturity progresses rapidly during puberty (after ages 9 in girls and 11 in boys), and that the maximum score difference between neighbouring age groups was observed at ages 12.5 in girls and 14.5 in boys on the spline-smoothed curve. Japanese children attain the adult stage 1 or 2 years earlier than other groups of children (at ages 15 in girls and 16 in boys).

The results suggest that most of the variables considered in this study appear to influence the CI of adult male Japanese students.

Summary: A separate moire photograph of 380 men's back was taken. Using a micro-computer the sagittal configuration of the spinal curvature line was reconstructed based on the moire fringe on the back. Then the sagittal configuration of this line was compared among groups according to their sports: rugby, soccer, kendo, swimming, yachting, four track and field events (sprinting, distance running, jumping, and throwing), body-building as well as non-athletic men.Distance runners and sprinters had a greater degree of thoracic kyphosis and greater degree of lumbar lordosis, while non-athletes had a smaller degree of both kyphosis and lordosis. Swimmers, bodybuilders, rugby and soccer players had partial lordosis. The degree of lumbar lordosis of swimmers and bodybuilders was less than average while the degree of thoracic kyphosis was ordinary and the degree of thoracic kyphosis of rugby and soccer players was less than average while the degree of lumbar lordosis was ordinary.