The Reliability Of Individual Maturity Phase Judged By Dental Age

[Objective]The objective of this study was to investigate the reliability of using dental age to indicate the individual maturity phase.[Method]The sample was derived from pretreatment digital panoramic radiographs and lateral skull cephalograms of 176 Chinese children, including 86 boys and 90 girls, aged 5-16 years. Maturity phase was evaluated by the cervical vertebral maturation (CVM) method. The mandibular second molars were chosen to assess the dental maturity using the Demirjian’s method. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used to determine the correlation between the 2 maturation indictors. In addition, positive likelihood ratios were calculated to identify the reliability of dental age to evaluate the growth phase.[Results]1. The dental age have quite correlation coefficients with bone maturities, and the correlation of female is higher than male’s.2. In the age distribution of tooth development phases:Initial (stage D,E,F) female is early than male, but in the late stage (stage G,H) male is early than female. However, bone growth phase in the distribution of the age:female always early than male.3. The positive likelihood ratios in female was much higher than male’s. The positive likelihood ratios in female were 40 in stage D and 11.85 in stage E, indicating the stage D could identify initiation phase (CVM1) and stage E could identify the acceleration phase (CVM2) respectively. For male:Stage D and stage H gave the positive likelihood ratios of 7.93 and 8.40 for identifying initiation phase (CVM1) and maturation phase (CVM5) respectively..[Conclusion]Dental age had high correlation coefficients with bone maturities. In female, it reliable criterion applied dental age indicating individual maturity phase clinically, stage D identify initiation phase, stage E indicate acceleration phase.