Abstract:

Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationships among dental age, chronological age, hand-wrist maturation and cervical vertebral maturation in Class I, Class II and Class III individuals. Method: Panoramic, cephalometric and hand-wrist radiographs of 289 individuals (151 girls, 138 boys) aged between 8 and 18 were evaluated in this study. Subjects divided into three main groups as Class I, Class II and Class III according to their sagittal skeletal malocclusion. The dental ages of the individuals were defined according to the Demirjian’s method. The Fishman maturation indicators were used for evaluating the hand-wrist radiographs and the method improved by Bacetti et al. were used for evaluating the maturation stages of the cervical vertebrae. The Spearman correlation analysis was used to evaluate the relationships between the variables separately for males and females. Results: The Spearman correlation coefficient indicated a significant positive correlation at different levels between all variables evaluated for both female and male individuals in all groups (P< 0.01). The lowest correlation was found between chronological age and dental age skeletal in Class II group (r: 0.413). The correlation between cervical vertebra maturation and hand-wrist maturation were highly positive for both sexes in all groups (P< 0.01). Conclusion: According to the results of our study, to define the growth spurt and developmental stages, cervical vertebrae maturation could be used as an alternative to hand-wrist maturation assessment. However, additional studies with a larger sample size may be helpful in proving the reliability of the dental age.

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