Comparison of Dental Maturity in Children of Different Ethnic Origins: International Maturity Curves for Clinicians

Abstract

Dental maturity was studied with 9577 dental panoramic tomograms of healthy subjects from 8 countries, aged between 2 and 25 years of age. Demirjian's method based on 7 teeth was used for determining dental maturity scores, establishing gender-specific tables of maturity scores and development graphs. The aim of this study was to give dental maturity standards when the ethnic origin is unknown and to compare the efficiency and applicability of this method to forensic sciences and dental clinicians. The second aim was to compare the dental maturity of these different populations. We noted an high efficiency for International Demirjian's method at 99%CI (0.85% of misclassified and a mean accuracy between 2 to 18 years ± 2.15 years), which makes it useful for forensic purposes. Nevertheless, this international method is less accurate than Demirjian's method developed for a specific country, because of the inter-ethnic variability obtained by the addition of 8 countries in the dental database. There are inter-ethnic differences classified in three major groups. Australians have the fastest dental maturation and Koreans have the slowest.

Influence of growth hormone therapy on selected dental and skeletal system parameters

“…These results are consistent with those of other authors. It seems that dental age evaluated in healthy children is head of birth age [28][29][30][31]. These results are consistent with the studies by Zatylna et al [32] carried out on 100 children, where dental age was ahead of birth age by 6 months, on average.…”

“…The cause of this phenomenon seems to be, e.g. ethnic differences [28,29,34], and also an observed tendency to earlier sexual maturity in normally developing children [29,31,32,34].…”

Accuracy of Dental Age in Nonadults: A Comparison of Two Methods for Age Estimation Using Radiographs of Developing Teeth

“…Research indicates sexual dimorphism in the timing and duration of tooth formation is known, with dental maturity generally being more advanced in females than males (Mincer et al 1993, Chaillet et al 2005. To account for this, many dental age estimation methods publish sex-specific formulas or charts (Demirjian et al1973, Moorees et al 1963.…”

“…Methods utilizing bone and dental tissues have been successfully used to determine age for non-adults (Chaillet et al 2005, Ubelaker 1989. While skeletal growth is commonly used to infer age, research indicates that the rate of skeletal maturation can be influenced by factors such as social economic status and secular change (Liversidge 2011, Saunders et al 1993.…”

Study of the interpopulational variability of the anatomically modern man: interest in orthodontics

“…Among these studies, the study by Nils et al 20 on 9577 panoramic tomography examinations in eight countries, with the sampling age ranging from 5 to 16 years, is domineering.…”