Objective:

The present systematic review was carried out to evaluate both qualitatively and quantitatively the effectiveness of the cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) method in predicting the pubertal growth spurt.

Methods:

PubMed, PMC, Scopus, SciELO, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), and Web of Science databases were searched. The research included every article published from 1970 to June 2019, featuring the keywords: (“cervical vertebrae” OR (“cervical” AND “vertebrae”) AND (“orthodontics” OR “growth and development” OR (“growth” AND “development”) OR (“growth”). The Preferred Reporting Items for Reporting Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) protocol was adopted, and quality assessments modified from the “Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology” (STROBE) and the “Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies” (STARD) were performed to conduct this systematic review.

Results:

Initially, 1284 articles were found. All the articles were then examined, and 43 studies met the inclusion criteria. Sixteen articles had low-quality scores, 25 had moderate scores, and 2 had high scores. The results showed a moderate to high statistically significant correlation between the CVM and other maturation methods.

Conclusion:

Overall, the CVM method can be considered an effective method and may be used with other skeletal indices for the radiographic assessment of skeletal maturity, and also to identify the growth peak in growing patients.

Keywords: Cervical vertebrae, skeletal maturation, growth spurt, systematic review, lateral cephalograms