Objective: The present study tries to correlate the skeletal maturational indicators of the hand to the chronological age and the height; through carpal radiographs of 218 Peruvian children form 9 to 16 years of age patients of de Peruvian University Cayetano Heredia.
Method: The present investigation correlate chronological age and skeletal maturational indicators, publishes by Leonard Fishman in 1982, as well as skeletal maturational indicators with height for boys an girls using correlation coefficients of Pearson , Spearman and ANOVA.
Results: We found a highly significant correlation between de chronological age and de Skeletal Maturation Indicators for boys and girls respectively (r=0.81, r=0.83); and for height and Skeletal Maturational Indicators for boys and girls respectively (r=0.84 , r=0.71) with p>0.001 The peak of pubertal growth occurred in Peruvian girls at the age of 11.11 years and for Peruvian boys it occurs at the age of 13.14 years. The mean height during this peak for girls was 1.46 meters (1.41m -1.55m) and for Peruvian boys it was 1.57meters (1.48m -1.66m).
Conclusion: The subjects in the study tend to start their pre-pubertal growth 9.6 to 9.3 months earlier then the subjects studied by Fishman in 1982, and therefore finish their pubertal growth before. This may indicate that the growth cycle in Peruvian children in this studied is shorter than that reported by Fishman in 1982 . Which is an important aspect to consider when using these Skeletal Growth Indicators published by Fishman on a different population .