ASSESSMENT OF SKELETAL AGE USING MIDDLE PHALANX, DENTAL AGE USING NOLLAS CLASSIFICATION & THEIR CORRELATION WITH CHRONOLOGICAL AGE IN CHILDREN

Introduction: The assessment of growth and development is an integral part of diagnosis & treatment planning in clinical pediatric dentistry. It is often necessary to know the correlation between the chronological age and maturation. The purpose of our study was to find out the interrelationship among chronological, skeletal and dental age.

Materials and Methods: This cross sectional study included 202 healthy Bengali patients (7-14 years, 101 males and 101 females) who visited the outpatient department of Pedodontics for regular dental check up. Date of birth of the children was documented along with radiovisiographs of middle phalanx and maxillary canines (right and left). Evaluation was done using Greulich & Pyle (1959) atlas and Nollas classification (1960) methods.  

Results: One way Analysis of Variance showed that there were no significant differences in mean ages between chronological, dental age and skeletal age in males and females (p>0.05). Skeletal age and dental age have a significant correlation with chronological age. A significant correlation was found between dental age right and left irrespective of sex.

Conclusion: Middle phalanx of third finger of left hand can be used as a maturity indicator in Bengali population. Both the maxillary canine calcifications show positive interrelationship suggestive of its role in assessment of dental development. The higher association found between chronological age and skeletal age than with the dental ages, also suggests skeletal age to be a better indicator of actual age of a child.