Comparison of Demirjian’s comprehensive chart with the London Atlas of tooth development in children and adolescents: a pilot study

Dental age estimation has its application in various subdisciplines of medicine and dentistry. New methods of dental age estimation are emerging and it’s important that we compare different methods to determine which one is more closely related to the chronological age. Demirjian’s method is one of the most widely used technique and has been tested in various ethnic populations globally. In 2016, Another, approach to dental age estimation is the London atlas of human tooth development and eruption. No study has compared both Demirjian’s comprehensive chart and London atlas method in the Indian population. Hence, in the current study we estimated dental age using both Demirjian’s comprehensive chart and London atlas method for association with the known chronologic age in children and adolescent orthodontic. The study also attempted to determine if sexual dimorphism existed in dental age estimated by the two methods. Dental age estimation was performed for both the methods on 100 orthopantomogram records (50 males and 50 females, aged 6-16 years) of orthodontic patients. The data were compared and analysed using paired t-tests. There was an overestimation of dental age by Demirjian’s comprehensive chart on an average of +1.3 in males and +0.5 in females, whereas using London Atlas, it was +1.4 years in males and +0.5 years in females. The mean of underestimation was -0.6 years in males and -0.8 years in females using Demirjian’s comprehensive chart, whereas it was -0.8 years in males and -0.5 years in females. A statistically significant difference (P<0.0001) was found when mean chronological age (11.6±2.6) of the participants was compared with dental age estimated using either Demirjian’s comprehensive chart (12.3±2.8) or London Atlas (11.8±2.9). The trends in this pilot study point towards more accuracy of London atlas over Demirjian’s method when done using comprehensive chart for estimating dental age. Studies with larger sample and on diverse ethnic population should be done to validate this finding.