Estimation of child’s biological age based on tooth development

Abstract

Dental development is relatively independent from other systems maturation. Recent studies have reported changes in the timing of tooth development for contemporary children comparing to children that lived more than 30 years ago (secular trend). Detectable variations in the tempo of tooth mineralization and duration of tooth maturation between children from different geographical regions were reported. Dental age is important not only for dental specialists, but also for pediatricians (in the evaluation of growth and development of healthy children, in pediatric endocrinology, in children with different diseases or syndromes) and forensic doctors (in order to estimate the age or to identify the child). The aim of our study was to investigate the regional characteristics of dental maturation in actual Romanian children. We conducted a cross-sectional study on a final sample of 441 radiographs of patients aged between 5.5 and 14.5 years (218 girls and 223 boys). The dental panoramic radiographs were scored by two examiners and intra- and inter- examiner calibration was made. We used a dedicated software for easy scoring, automatic dental age determination and as a database. On average, the Romanian girls showed an overestimation of 0.36 years, meaning 132 days, p=0.129, α = 0.05 and boys an underestimation of 0.04 years, meaning 15 days, p = 0.852, α = 0.05. New tables were developed in order to convert dental maturity calculated according to Demirjian method into dental age of contemporary Romanian children.

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