Intraindividual incongruences of medially ossifying clavicles in borderline adults as seen from thin-slice CT studies of 2595 male persons

Abstract

In the past, numerous studies have documented the possibility of intraindividual differing appearances of the paired age-marker "medial clavicular ossification" in borderline adults. However, the extent of the divergences is rarely mentioned. Against that the article describes this phenomenon from a large sample of 2595 male persons by means of thin-slice CT imaging of the sternoclavicular regions. For determining the ossification stage of the medial clavicles, the two accepted classifications by Schmeling et al. (five main stages) and Kellinghaus et al. (six substages) were applied and buildings deviating from that labelled as atypical "norm variants". The longstanding observation could be confirmed that intraindividual stage discrepancies of this age indicator are generally moderate and do not exceed one main stage or two substages of the respective classifications. It is concluded that stage determination should be scrutinized, if a dissimilarity seems to show larger differences.

Keywords: Intraindividual incongruence; Medial clavicular ossification; Medical age assessment.