[Identification of developmental stages of wisdom teeth on orthopantomograms of adolescents and young adults as an aid for forensic-odontological age-estimations: predictive values for the chronological age of 18 years].
Dental findings are an important source of information regarding forensic-odontologic determination of identity and age. A main part of dental age assessment is the determination of the wisdom teeth' development. The aim of this study was to answer the question whether the development of wisdom teeth can give information for the task of individual age estimation. Thereby, the investigation could contribute to age estimation efforts that are carried out on persons with an unknown age and where it is of high importance to know as exactly as possible the age of a person, e.g. the age of 18 years or older, for determining the punishment for a criminal offence.


METHODS
The orthopantomograms of 1053 outpatients were evaluated. The patients were aged 14 to 24 years. The developmental stages of the wisdom teeth were determined according to Demirjian. The data were calculated using statistical tools, like descriptive and inferential statistics in order to provide predictive values for the age to be above or below 18 years.


RESULTS
The correlation between the developmental stages of wisdom teeth and the chronological age was high in general. Some values allowed the prediction of an age above 18 years with a probability of more than 70% to 80%, in some instances even more than 90%. The most appropriate developmental stage to determine the age of 18 years was A 1/2 (completed root development, apex open). The positive predictive value of this finding was 94%.


CONCLUSIONS
This study provides for the first time predictive values for the estimation whether or not a person is 18 years of age, based on the evaluation of developmental stages of wisdom teeth on orthopantomograms only. These results should be compared to data from other populations gained by the same method.
Friedrich
Reinhard E
RE
Klinik und Poliklinik für Zahn-, Mund-, Kiefer- und Gesichtschirurgi, Nordwestdeutsche Kieferklinik.
Ulbricht
Carsten
C
von Maydell
Ljuba A
LA
Scheuer
Hanna A
HA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000366:Age Determination by Teeth; D006801:Humans; D008964:Molar, Third / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000254:growth & development*; D011862:Radiography, Panoramic; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013223:Statistics as Topic