Researchers are investigating about dental development as a solid parameter for determining the age of children and youngsters in forensic and anthropological settings. In a recently published review of two dental development assessment techniques (the Demirjian and Willems methods), they found the Willems methodology to give a more exact estimation of sequential/chronological age. Nevertheless, it was specified that the age of children in numerous populations are still overestimated using the technique.
As implied by the investigators, the findings have pointers for development assessment in general and the usage of global norms that are, as it were, untested in African people. They communicated that the information from dental development may assume an important role in taking various clinical decisions, including choices about treatment options and course of action of treatment. The review, titled“The Demirjian versus the Willems method for dental age estimation in different populations: A meta-analysis of published studies”, was distributed on 8 November in PLoS ONE.
The paper’s co-author Dr Lynne A. Schepartz, an associate professor and head of the Biological Anthropology Division at the university, expressed: “It is important to accurately estimate chronological age from a sample of living children in the population of interest, because this information can then be used as a benchmark for evaluating the growth of health-compromised children. Our review illustrates that there is significant population-level variation in the tempo of dental development.”
