Dental age in Dutch children

Dental age was studied in a sample of 451 Dutch children (226 boys and 225 girls) according to the method of Demirjian. They were born between 1972 and 1993 and were between 3 and 17 years of age at the time a dental pantomogram (DPT) was obtained. All children were placed in the age group closest to their chronological age. All 451 DPTs were scored by one examiner. A subset of 52 DPTs was scored by a second examiner and the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and Cohen's kappa were calculated. The ICC was 0.99 and Cohen's kappa 0.68. Boys and girls were analysed separately. A significant difference was found between chronological age and dental age. On average, the Dutch boys were 0.4 years and the girls 0.6 years ahead of the French-Canadian children analysed by Demirjian. Therefore, the French-Canadian standards were not considered suitable for Dutch children. New graphs for the Dutch population were constructed using a logistic curve with the equation Y = 100*{1/(1 + e-alpha;(x-x0))} as a basis. The 90 per cent confidence interval was calculated. To determine whether the logistic curve was correct, a residual analysis was carried out and scatter plots of the differences were made. The explained variance was 93.9 per cent for the boys and 94.8 per cent for the girls. Both the residual analysis and the scatter plots indicated that the logistic curve was appropriate for use with Dutch children. In addition to the graphs, tables were produced which transfer the maturity scores calculated by the method of Demirjian into Dutch dental age.

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