Dental Age Estimation in Children Using Orthopantomograms

Developing teeth are used to assess maturity and estimate age in a number of disciplines, such as pediatric and preventive dentistry, orthodontics, forensic odontology, etc. Aim: The accuracy of different methods has not been systematically investigated within the Croatian population, so the aim of this investigation was to determine the accuracy of two methods; Demirjian's and Haavikko's. Material and Methods: Tooth formation was assessed from orthopantomograms (OPGs) belonging to healthy children, patients of the School of Dental Medicine, University of Zagreb. The sample consisted of 324 children (149 boys, 175 girls, ages 6-16 years). The OPGs were examined and seven mandibular teeth were staged according to Demirjian's dental maturity scale and according to Haavikko. Descriptive statistics were used together with relation analysis (Spearman correlation) and tests (Lilliefors test for normality of distribution, t-test for significance of Spearman's rank-order correlation coefficient, and Mann-Whitney test for testing the differences between boys and girls). Results: Dental age and the difference between dental and actual chronological age was calculated for both methods. Results showed that Demirjian's method overestimated the age while Haavikko's method underestimated the age. All data was subjected to both correlation and regression analysis, which showed that both applied methods gave results with significant correlation to the actual age (Demirjian's method yielded a 0.93 coefficient of correlation, Haavikko's method yielded a correlation coefficient of 0.89, p<0.05). Conclusion: This study on Croatian children has shown high correlation coefficients for both methods and demonstrated their potential benefit in clinical and scientific use.