Cervical vertebrae maturation method: Poor reproducibility

Cervical vertebral maturation as a biologic indicator of skeletal maturity

“…Once the articles were selected, we systematically assigned a methodological score to each study in order to characterize them as useful or not (Table 3). Based on quality assessment, we found that six studies 2,6,19,[25][26][27] were particularly useful, with a moderate to high score. As stated above, 17 studies 4,7,14,28-41 with a low score (,6.5 points) were considered to be of low methodological quality and were not particularly useful.…”

“…With regard to randomization, only the studies of Chang et al 6 and Gabriel et al 19 superficially mentioned that the sample records analyzed were randomly selected. However, the specific criteria for randomization were not described in their articles.…”

“…Articles that presented methodological deficiencies, which would likely compromise the interpretation of reported results, were excluded from this study. We found 23 articles that met the inclusion criteria, 2,6,7,14,18,19,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] but only six 2,6,19,[25][26][27] were considered to be of moderate to high methodological quality.…”

“…1,5,14,17,18 However, the reproducibility of the CVM method has been questioned. 19 In spite of extensive research about CVM methods applied to skeletal maturity assessment during the past years, statistical and biological details about the relationship between vertebral shape and skeletal maturation are still missing. 20 Systematic reviews are useful tools with which to obtain evidence-based clinical information.…”

Alteracoes cefalometricas esqueleticas em pacientes em crescimento submetidos a tratamento com recurso a aparelhos funcionais

“…A explicação poderá estar no facto da distribuição desses grupos não estar equitativamente distribuída pela amostra, uma vez que para o estádio III apenas existem três pacientes. Além disso, existem diversos autores que defendem que este método deve ser utilizado com muita precaução 18,40 ou mesmo que não deve ser utilizado para identificar os picos de crescimento da mandíbula uma vez que apesar de se conseguirem visualizar as diferenças na forma e tamanho das vértebras, não se conseguiram associar aos estádios de maturação correspondentes ao maior ou menor crescimento mandibular, em parte devido à grande subjetividade e ao seu carácter qualitativo em vez de quantitativo. [41][42][43][44][45] …”