Decayed, filled and missing teeth as a forensic-odontologic aid for determining the age above 18 years: A radiographic study of orthopantomograms from a group of teenagers and young adults

The human teeth are a valuable source of information concerning identification and age calculation in forensic sciences. Dental treatment often causes permanent alteration of the teeth, which is visible on radiographs. The correlation of decayed, missing or filled teeth and chronological age has not yet been used for determining the accomplished 18th year of life in teenagers and young adults, e. g. for legal and anthropological purposes. The aim of this study was to determine whether the evaluation of these findings on radiographs correlates with the chronological age in teenagers and young adults. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The dental X-rays (orthopantomograms, OPG) of 1053 outpatients (age: 14 to 24 years) were evaluated. The values "decayed", "missing", or "filled" were recorded for each tooth present. The data were then calculated using statistical tools. RESULTS: The correlation between the number of missing teeth and the chronological age is low. However, the positive predictive value of determining the age of 18 years for certain types of teeth proved to be very high, even up to 100 %. Further, high numbers of filled teeth gave reasonable positive predictive values for an age of 18 years. The number of decayed teeth did not correlate with age. DISCUSSION: This study provides for the first time predictive values for the estimation whether a person is 18 years of age, based on the evaluation of decayed, missing or filled teeth on OPGs only. Whereas the number of patients with such findings is generally low in this age group, some of the positive findings can be used for age estimation as an adjunct to other sources of age calculation. The sole application of these items is not recommended, as sanitary conditions of the teeth depend on both social and individual circumstances. Therefore, the calculated values also reflect the culture of the sample studied. Finally, they are time-dependent and have to be compared to data from other populations. These results have some bearing on the field of forensic odontology.