RESEARCH ARTICLE
Dental and Chronological Ages as Determinants of Peak Growth Period and Its Relationship with Dental Calcification Stages
George Litsas1, *, Alessandra Lucchese2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2016Volume: 10
First Page: 99
Last Page: 108
Publisher ID: TODENTJ-10-99
DOI: 10.2174/1874210601610010099
Article History:
Received Date: 9/4/2015Revision Received Date: 7/12/2015
Acceptance Date: 30/12/2015
Electronic publication date: 08/04/2016
Collection year: 2016
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Purpose:
To investigate the relationship between dental, chronological, and cervical vertebral maturation growth in the peak growth period, as well as to study the association between the dental calcification phases and the skeletal maturity stages during the same growth period.
Methods:
Subjects were selected from orthodontic pre-treatment cohorts consisting of 420 subjects where 255 were identified and enrolled into the study, comprising 145 girls and 110 boys. The lateral cephalometric and panoramic radiographs were examined from the archives of the Department of Orthodontics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Dental age was assessed according to the method of Demirjian, and skeletal maturation according to the Cervical Vertebral Maturation Method. Statistical elaboration included Spearman Brown formula, descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation coefficient and regression analysis, paired samples t-test, and Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient.
Results:
Chronological and dental age showed a high correlation for both gender(r =0.741 for boys, r = 0.770 for girls, p<0.001). The strongest correlation was for the CVM Stage IV for both males (r=0.554) and females (r=0.68). The lowest correlation was for the CVM Stage III in males (r=0.433, p<0.001) and for the CVM Stage II in females (r=0.393, p>0.001). The t-test revealed statistically significant differences between these variables (p<0.001) during the peak period. A statistically significant correlation (p<0.001) between tooth calcification and CVM stages was determined. The second molars showed the highest correlation with CVM stages (CVMS) (r= 0.65 for boys, r = 0.72 for girls).
Conclusion:
Dental age was more advanced than chronological for both boys and girls for all CVMS. During the peak period these differences were more pronounced. Moreover, all correlations between skeletal and dental stages were statistically significant. The second molars showed the highest correlation whereas the canines showed the lowest correlation for both gender.
