Dental age assessment on panoramic radiographs: Comparison between two generations of young Finnish subjects.

Objective To analyse the accuracy of a meta-analysis-based dental age assessment (DAA) method in Finnish paediatric patients and to compare the dental development between two generations of Finnish children. Methods Panoramic radiographs of Finnish Caucasian healthy children from two generations (early: born 1981-1984; subsequent: born 1996-2008) were analysed. All developing teeth on the left maxilla and mandible as well as the third permanent molars were analysed following Demirjian's classification. For each patient, dental age was calculated and compared with chronological age. Dental maturation patterns between the two groups were compared. Results The study included 200 Finnish Caucasian healthy children from two generations (early: aged 7-13 years; subsequent: aged 6-15 years). In the early generation, DAA underestimated the chronological age by a mean of 3.15 years. The underestimation was only 0.11 years in patients < 10 years, but 3.86 years in patients ≥ 10 years. In the subsequent generation, the dental age was overestimated by a mean of 0.34 years; by 0.40 years in patients < 10 years and by 0.08 years in patients ≥ 10 years. Conclusions The present DAA method is applicable to current Finnish children. Differences in dental development between two generations of Finnish children were detected.