Nazeer Khan, Arham N Chohan.
Age Estimation of Female School Children by Number of Permanent Teeth Erupted; A Study from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
J Pak Dent Assoc Jan ;19(3):180-3.

OBJECTIVE: To find out the most suitable and reliable method for estimation of age of Saudi female children at the time of eruption of a permanent tooth. METHODOLOGY: The population used for this cross-sectional study was comprised of female schoolchildren from kindergarten to intermediate schools (pre-school to grade 9) of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A total of 4836 children were examined and only 1599 children showed at least one tooth ‘just’ erupted. Height and weight of the selected sample were recorded after the clinical examination. The demographic information was recorded from their personal files of the school record. Number of teeth present at the time of eruption of a new permanent tooth (Method 1) and linear regression (Method 2) were employed to estimate the calendar age. RESULT: On average time of 5 years and 9 months, two teeth are erupted in Saudi female children and about 13 years of age all the teeth except third molars are erupted. The regression equation of age (Y) with height(X1), weight(X2) and total number of teeth(X3) erupted was as follows: 2 Ŷ = -6.008 + 0.182 X1 + 0.096 X2 – 0.013 X3 R = 0.847; Results showed that calendar age of 63% and 70.8% of the Saudi females can be estimated accurately within ± 1 year by Method 1 and Method 2, respectively. Furthermore, age of 38.5% and 39.4% of Saudi female children can be accurately estimated within ±0.5 years by these two methods, respectively. CONCLUSION: Regression method showed better age estimation procedure than simply counting the number of teeth at the time eruption.

PakMediNet -Pakistan's largest Database of Pakistani Medical Journals - http://www.pakmedinet.com