Age estimation among North Indians by cementum annulation count: A light microscopic study

Abstract

Aim of the study Dental hard tissues are reliable tool for age estimation. Present investigation was aimed to study cementum annulations in relation to age, sex and periodontal disease and its application in age estimation. Material and methods 103 ( M = 36, F = 67) single rooted teeth extracted due to caries, orthodontic , periodontal disease and prosthetic reasons were collected from Department of Oral Health Sciences, Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. Labiolingual sections were prepared and cementum annulations were photographed under light microscope . Counting of annulations was done on image analysis software (VideoTesT – Size 5.0). Age was estimated by adding total number of annulations to tooth specific mean eruption age. Data was analyzed separately for pooled data, two sexes and with periodontal disease. Results Good correlation ( r = 0.9) was observed between cementum annulation count and known age in pooled data as well as in two sexes (Males, r = 0.9 and Females, 1.0). Even, in periodontal diseased teeth, a good correlation was found ( r = 0.9). In these cases, absolute mean error was approximately ±7.1 years as compared to ±5.7 years in teeth having no periodontal disease ( r = 1.0). In pooled data, this error was approximately ±6.40 years. Conclusion It is feasible to estimate age by counting cementum annulations irrespective of sex but periodontal status of tooth has to be considered.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 9 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.