Introduction: the dental age which can be deduced from the stages of dental maturation is accepted as being a reliable indicator in the estimate of civil age of children whose date of birth is unknown. It is also a good indicator of the biological maturity of growing children and the relevance of its use in paediatric dentistry and orthodontics was proven. Various methods of determination of maturation or dental development from radiographies were described. The mostly used method is that of Demirjian. Studies have shown that genetic factors could influence the maturation of certain organs. Thus, the generalisation of Demirjian standards to others population can be questioned. The aim of the present study was to test the applicability of Demirjian's standards for the determination of the civil age from dental maturation stages.
Material and methods: The dental maturation stages of a randomised sample of 200 Senegalese children aged from 6 to 14 years (101 boys and 99 girls) was evaluated by Demirjian's method. Data collected were converted into Dental Age from the conversion charts proposed by Demirjian. The dental age obtained was compared with the civil age of the subjects.
Results: The results of this study indicate that the civil age of the patients was overestimated when evaluated from Demirjian's standards (0.89 years for girls and 0.48 years for boys). A linear regression equation was then proposed for the correct estimate of the civil age from the dental maturation stages.