Evaluation of chronological age based on third molar development in the Spanish population

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was carried out to assess chronological age estimation based on the stages of third lower molar development, following the eight stages (A-H) method of Demirjian et al. The final sample consisted of 1,054 orthopantomograms from Spanish individuals of known chronological age (range 14-21 years) and gender (462 males and 592 females). Results showed a stronger correlation for males (r(2)=0.54) than for females (r(2)=0.45). Root formation occurred earlier in males than females, in stages 5, 6 and 7. The mean difference between chronological and estimated age was -0.10 years (+/-1.23 SD) for left third molar, and -0.07 years (+/-1.22 SD) for right third molar, with slight variations regarding sex. Comparative tables are provided regarding medicolegal questions concerning age 18 prediction in the Spanish population, showing that legal age is reached in stage 7 (G) by women and in stage 8 (H) by men. No differences have been observed between sides (p<0.0001). Differences were observed between Spaniards and other previously studied populations. Third molar maturity takes place earlier in the Spanish than French-Canadian, Scandinavian, American, German, Japanese and South African populations and is more similar to US Hispanics in root development.

Estimating age and the likelihood of having attained 18 years of age using mandibular third molars

“…Six methods estimated age with bias not signifi cantly different to zero. These include maturity data from Levesque et al adapted for age estimation (see Table 2), 4 data from Spain, Turkey, China and South African Blacks [11][12][13]23 and adjusted data from the reference study (all groups combined). 2 Measures of accuracy include SD of bias as well as mean absolute difference between known and dental ages.…”

“…Diagnostic accuracy of M3 to predict age 18 was tested. Design Methods were tested on a target sample of 300 dental panoramic radiographs (age [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Diagnostic accuracy was assessed on separate reference data (n = 1,663, age [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

Comparative study on the effect of ethnicity on wisdom tooth eruption

“…Forensic age estimation in living subjects is a current focus of research interest [2,4,5,11,12,[14][15][16][17][18]. Wisdom tooth mineralization has been the main criterion used for dental age diagnosis in adolescents so far.…”

All in her head

“…Dental age assessment is carried out using methods parallel to ours in Norway, 13 Belgium, 14 Germany, 15 Spain, 16 Italy 17 and Austria. 18 The problem of estimating the age of asylum seekers will not go away.…”