Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Betsy on December 11, 2012 at 12:09pm

Our son is 13 just diagnosed in March but we have not heard of this....it will be interesting to hear if anyone else has run into this.

Permalink Reply by Ursela on December 11, 2012 at 3:15pm

I'm an X-ray tech. I have done many many bone age X-rays. It really isn't a big deal. It consists of one X-ray of the hand = very little radiation and very little time.

What they are looking for in this particular X-ray is how closed her growth plates are. Her X-ray will be compared to thousands of X-rays that were done as a study on children's growth. It will determine if she has any growth left.

With that said, how tall are you and her father? If you are both shorter, there probably isn't anything to worry about. However, if she has stopped growing it could be because of something non-genetic (something going on with the growth hormones). My advice is to get the X-ray and find out.

Permalink Reply by daneenm on December 11, 2012 at 3:23pm

We JUST did this with my son. In his case it was because he has suddenly grown in a'certain area' and the doctore wanted to be sure he wasn't farther along in his bone growth than he should have been. The x-ray was easy and pretty cool (I stood behind the tech when she did it). In our case, all was well. His results were within 6 months of his true age.

Permalink Reply by Patti on December 11, 2012 at 6:39pm

We had the opposite experience, my older son was growing way too fast! This was pre-diagonosis, and the doctor wanted to be sure there wasn't a problem in his adrenal glands. His bone age was about 2 years "older" than he was, but everything else checked out. After all was said and done the diagnosis - an early bloomer :)

The x ray was no big deal at all.