Dental development in Down syndrome and healthy children: a comparative study using the Demirjian method

In children with Down syndrome, the timing of dental eruption is important for orthodontics treatment planning. Aim of this study was to determine whether tooth eruption and development of the dentition in children with Down syndrome are impaired.

Dental development was scored on orthopantomograms (OPTs) of 95 children with Down syndrome. The dental age was determined at the left mandibular side according to the Demirjian method and by converting the assigned scores to the dental maturity score. Dental development scores of control children and DS children were compared with a mixed model linear regression analysis.

The model showed statistically significant changes relating to increasing age (P<0.001) and gender (P<0.05). In this comparison, the total DS group (with and without hypodontia) was not statistically significantly different from the control group. There was also no significant difference between the total sample of DS children and the control group after using the Nyström imputation (with and without hypodontia).

The findings showed that dental development in DS children is similar to the development of control children and that a relationship exists between hypodontia and dental development. The clinically observed late eruption is probably not due to late dental development but due to the other processes that take place during eruption, such as the possible impaired processes at the apical side and the occlusal side of an erupting element.