Abstract

Introduction: Age estimation is an essential assignment in clinical forensic medicine. In forensic medicine department of Medical College, Kolkata, dental age is assessed by noting eruption/emergence of respective tooth and skeletal age is estimated by observing appearance and fusion of secondary ossification centres on the skiagram, in reference to Galstaun’s chart. Both are age-old and have significant observer variations. This study is done to ascertain applicability of these methods to contemporary population. Objectives:To determine correlation between dental, skeletal and chronological age of the study population. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional and observational study was performed on 52 Bengali subjects of 6-18 years age (36 male and 16 female) excluding subjects with obvious skeletal or developmental abnormalities and without valid documentation of age. Pearson’s coefficient was applied to measure the correlation, as mentioned. Results: Chronological age was found to be positively correlated with dental and skeletal age and found to be statistically significant (p<0.01). The correlation between dental and skeletal age was also found to be statistically significant (p<0.01). Conclusion: The routine methods used for age estimation is simple, cost effective, easy to perform with minimum training and is still applicable to the contemporary population.

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