Dental Age Estimation Standards for Hispanic Children and Adolescents in California

Abstract

Background: In recent years, cross-border migrations have resulted in an increase in the number of unaccompanied children apprehended at the United States border, particularly in the state of California. The assessment of the chronological age of a child, in many instances, determines the type of services rendered within the medico-legal system. Age can be determined by using population-specific reference standards, preferably within a geographical area. However, such standards are not available for Hispanic children living in California. Aim: To present new standards by developing and validating a reference data set for dental age estimation in Hispanic children in California. Methods: For the reference dataset, a total of 705 dental panoramic radiographs of healthy children aged 7.00 to 13.99 years belonging to Hispanic ethnicity in California were obtained from the archives of a teaching hospital. All permanent teeth on the left side were scored in automated software, and the average at assessment was calculated for each stage of dental development. For the validation dataset, 133 radiographs that were not part of the reference dataset were obtained based on the above criteria. The difference between the chronological age (CA) and dental age (DA) estimated using the California Hispanic reference dataset was assessed using a paired t-test with a statistical significance of p < 0.05. Results: The overall difference between the chronological age and dental age (CA-DA) was 0.03 years (1.56 weeks) for females and −0.10 years (−5.26 weeks) for males, and the difference was not statistically significant for children aged 8.00 to 12.99 years (p > 0.05). Conclusions: The newly constructed dental reference data can be recommended for age estimation in children belonging to Hispanic ethnicity in California.