Dental and Skeletal Age Assessment

Knowledge of dental and skeletal age is of great value to the dental practitioner in planning treatment for the patients requiring orthodontic myofunctional therapy in pediatric dentistry.Visual, radiographic, chemical and histological techniques can be used for dental age estimation. Radiographically, Nolla, Haavikko, Mooree¿s and Demirjian¿s methods are often used to determine dental age. Amongst the age estimation methods, eruption and calcification of dental tissues have been used to determine the age, however tooth calcification is superior to tooth emergence as calcification is a continuous process that can be assessed by permanent records such as X-ray. Beside Dental age, Skeletal development evaluation using hand-wrist radiographs and cervical vertebrae maturation have been frequently used has received growing interest as a biological indicators of skeletal development. Amongst the skeletal methods, the radiological study of hand-wrist is the single most useful method of studying skeletal age.Thus, it can be finally recommended that rather than restricting on one age estimation techniques and performing repetitive measurements may be beneficial for accurate age estimation.