Applicability of Demirjian's method for dental age estimation in a group of Egyptian children

The aims of this study were to evaluate the applicability of Demirjian's method for dental age assessment in a group of Egyptian children in Minia city and to develop an age predictive equation suitable for the studied group.

In this retrospective, blind, cross-sectional study, 160 dental panoramic radiographs (DPTs) were selected from 420 DPTs from healthy children aged between three and 10 years old from the archived medical files of patients attending Minia University Dental Hospital (MUDH) and evaluated to estimate dental ages.

Age was overestimated for almost all of the studied subjects with an accuracy range from 0.18 to 1.19 years for males and from 0.08 to 0.87 years for females, with the exception of two age subgroups (9-10-year-old males and 10-11-year-old females, for which the mean difference values were -0.06 and -0.008 years, respectively). A Logistic regression was used to generate a suggested formula for dental age estimation.

Demirjian's method may be unsuitable for Egyptian children living in Minia city. Development of a predication equation and the introduction of adaptable conversion tables to transform the maturity score into a dental age for Egyptian children may be suitable alternatives. The validity of the newly developed prediction equation must be tested among all Egyptian children.