COMPARISON OF DENTAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL AGE IN CHILDREN FROM SARAJEVO WITH DIFFERENT SAGITAL SKELETAL MALOCCLUSIONS – A PILOT STUDY

Background chronological age of children with skeletal sagittal malocclusions, using dental age estimation methods, and to investigate whether dental age assessment methods produce comparable estimates of chronological age in skeletal Class I, II and III. Methods: The sample consisted of panoramic dental images and lateral cephalograms of 231 orthodontic patients (127 girls and 104 boys) ageing from 5.9 to 15.8 years, collected at the Department for Orthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry University in Sarajevo. Dental maturation was evaluated according to the Willems and Demirjian methods, while saggital skeletal relationship was evaluated using the ANB angle from lateral cephalograms. The ANOVA was used to evaluate the relationship between skeletal malocclusions and dental age estimates. Results: Dental age methods overestimated chronological age. The Demirjian method overestimated the age of girls by 1.24±1.03 years, and age of boys by 0.80±1.03 years. The Willems method overestimated the age of girls by 0.36±0.98 years, and that of boys by 0.44±0.98 years. No differences were found in estimates of chronological age using skeletal pattern methods (p>0.05). Conclusions: Dental age methods overestimated chronological age of sampled children, the Willems method yielded smaller estimation errors and is therefore suggested to be more appropriate for chronological age estimation than the Demirjian method. Based on this pilot study, there is no difference between dental maturation among different sagittal skeletal growth patterns. However, further studies with larger sample are required.