Introduction: Dental maturation is a useful indicator of growth. Moreover, skeletal maturation is assessed by the cervical vertebrae maturation (CVM) stages, using lateral cephalometric radiographs. This study aimed to investigate the association between Demirjian’s method and CVM stages and also to analyze the diagnostic performance of the dental maturation stages for identification of growth phases in Guilani subjects.
Materials and methods: Digital panoramic and lateral cephalometric radiographs of 200 healthy subjects (73 boys and 127 girls, ranging from 6 to 18 years of age) were examined. Dental maturity was assessed by Demirjian’s method, whereas skeletal maturity was estimated by the CVM stages.
Diagnostic performances were evaluated based on the identification of the growth phases using positive likelihood ratios (LHR+). The Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient was used to measure the association between the CVM stages and dental calcification stages.
Results: Correlation between the dental developmental stages and CVM stages was statistically significant (moderate for males, r=0.515 and high for females, r=0.889). Three teeth revealed positive LHRs greater than 10 only for identification of the prepubertal growth phase, with value from 36.46 for second molar (stage E) and 19.75 for canine and first premolar (stage F in both).
Conclusion: Despite the moderate to high correlation between the dental and skeletal maturity in Guilani subjects, diagnostic performances of the dental maturity for the identification of pubertal growth spurt would be limited. Thus, the second molar (stage E) has the highest diagnostic performance only in the identification of prepubertal phase.