ORAL HEALTH EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE PROGRAM
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Title Cameriere Method Outperforms The Willems Method And The Demirjian Method In Accurately Assessing A Child’s Chronological Age
Clinical Question In a child of unknown age, will the Cameriere Method of determining chronological age be as accurate as the Willems Method and the Demirjian Method in assessing the child’s true age?
Clinical Bottom Line The Cameriere Method is more accurate in predicting the chronological age of children between the age of 5-15 years, with p>0.001 in comparison to the Willems Method and the Demirjian Method, with the most accuracy in children under 14 years of age.
Best Evidence (you may view more info by clicking on the PubMed ID link)
PubMed ID Author / Year Patient Group Study type
(level of evidence)
#1) 17949930Cameriere/2008401 girls and 355 boys of Italian, Spanish, and Croatian nationality, ages 5-15 years oldRetrospective Diagnostic
Key resultsThe Cameriere Method underestimated the real chronological age of children, showing a median of residuals of 0.081 years for girls and 0.036 years for boys. There were no significant differences viewed neither for the nationalities, nor for age distribution between the boys and girls, (p=0.100, p=0.864, respectively) The Cameriere Method also had significantly less mean prediction errors (girls: 0.479, boys: 0.499, both: 0.488), proving to be also more accurate than the Willems Method (girls: 0.931, boys: 0.935, both: 0.933) and the Demirjian Method ( girls: 1.133, boys: 1.011, both: 1.076) when compared to the child’s true chronological age.
Evidence Search (“Forensic Dentistry”[Mesh] )AND “Age Determination by Teeth”[Mesh] AND Cameriere
Comments on
The Evidence
Orthopantomographs were used for all children, with the same left mandibular teeth being analyzed. All children with hypodontia or gross pathology were excluded. It cannot be noted whether the results and the radiographs were looked at blindly, however, all measurements and analyses were performed by the same observer to take into account intra-observer differences. For all three methods, the same radiographs were used to estimate the child’s age. Forty radiographs were also chosen at random to test reproducibility by the same observer after a period of two weeks. No statements were provided to determine whether or not there were any biases or competing interests, however, the author and the creator of the Cameriere Method seem to be one and the same. Perhaps the article and the results can later be compared to other research currently occurring in different parts of the world involving comparisons of the same three methods of calculating a child’s chronological age.
Applicability The location of the study and ethnicity of the patient group could limit the applicability to patients of the United States.
Specialty/Discipline (Oral Medicine/Pathology/Radiology) (General Dentistry) (Pediatric Dentistry)
Keywords Age estimation, forensic odontology, forensic anthropology
ID# 2221
Date of submission: 04/09/2012spacer
E-mail Laings3@livemail.uthscsa.edu
Author Stormy Laing
Co-author(s)
Co-author(s) e-mail
Faculty mentor/Co-author S. Thomas Deahl, II, DMD, PhD
Faculty mentor/Co-author e-mail deahl@uthscsa.edu
Basic Science Rationale
(Mechanisms that may account for and/or explain the clinical question, i.e. is the answer to the clinical question consistent with basic biological, physical and/or behavioral science principles, laws and research?)
post a rationale
None available
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Comments and Evidence-Based Updates on the CAT
(FOR PRACTICING DENTISTS', FACULTY, RESIDENTS and/or STUDENTS COMMENTS ON PUBLISHED CATs)
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by Jared Ricks, Gustavo Garza (San Antonio, Texas) on 11/28/2017
The PubMed and TRIP databases were searched on November 2017, and two more recent publications were found that corroborated the findings of CAT #2221. The first study (PMID: 20878416) compared the Cameriere method to the Demirjian method as well as one other method not related to this CAT article. The Cameriere method was found to be the most accurate in estimating chronological age of Bosnian-Herzegovian children aged 6-13 years. The second study (PMID: 25748440) studied the Demirjian, Willems, Cameriere, and one other method in children 11-16 years of age. It was found that the Cameriere method showed the highest combination of sensitivity and specificity at the age threshold of 14 years.
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