Testing the London atlas for age estimation in Thai population

Abstract

Objectives: To test the London atlas for dental age (ADA) estimation in Thai population.

Materials and methods: The London atlas for age estimation was tested in 111 digital panoramic radiographs of children (57 ♂ and 54 ♀) aged between 4.00 and 15.99 years. The difference between chronological age (CA) and ADA was investigated using a paired subjects t-test. The significance of the difference between CA and ADA was tested using the F-tests of the one-way ANOVA. The analysis of variance considered the effects of sex, age group and the interaction between sex and age group. Other analyses included the difference of ADA by age group and the comparison between CA and ADA by sex. SPSS Statistics 24 was used for all analyses (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL).

Results: ADA correlated to CA with a discrepancy of 1.3 years maximum. There was no significant effect of sex (F (1, 87)=0.278, p = .600), age group (F (11, 87)=1.032, p = .426) and sex and age group (F (11, 87)=1.238, p = .275) between CA and ADA.

Conclusions: The estimates of dental ages correlate and reasonably reflect the CAs of Thai children and adolescents for both males and females from age 4.00 to age 15.99.

Keywords:

• Dental age estimation
• Thailand
• children
• London atlas

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank the Department of Dentistry, Police General Hospital, Bangkok, Thailand for its support.