Intra- and inter-examiner variations in four dental methods for age estimation of children

The intra- and inter-examiner variations of the estimated chronological ages of children were studied with the methods described by Gustafson & Koch (1974), Liliequist & Lundberg (1971), Demirjian et al. (1973) and Haavikko (1974). Orthopantomographs of 197 children aged 5, 6, 9, and 12 years were evaluated by 13 independent examiners to study the inter-examiner variations, and 28 orthopantomographs were examined twice by 12 examiners to evaluate the intra-examiner variation. The result showed an overall good agreement between the first and second rating, even if there were some non-systematic differences between the two ratings with some methods at some ages. However, different examiners could differ considerably from each other when rating the same radiograph, and consequently a wide range of estimated ages was obtained. There was no single outlier examiner who systematically differed from the others, but the extremes varied from examiner to examiner for the different children.