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[Leif Kullman]

Hi Lennart
Yes some serious research has beem made in age
estimation and differences
of ethnic origin.
Our colleague in Radiology in Denmark, A. Wenzel made
a lot some years ago for example.
Here are some of her articles from that time

  Melsen B, Wenzel A, Miletic T, Andreasen J,
Vagn-Hansen PL, Terp S.
     Dental and skeletal maturity in adoptive
children: assessments at arrival and after
one year in the   admitting country.
                  Ann Hum Biol. 1986
Mar-Apr;13(2):153-9.
                  PMID: 3707044

                 2:
 Wenzel A, Droschl H, Melsen B.
 Skeletal maturity in Austrian children assessed by
the GP and the TW-2 methods.
                  Ann Hum Biol. 1984
Mar-Apr;11(2):173-7.
                  PMID: 6732183

                 3:
 Wenzel A, Melsen B.
                    Skeletal maturity in 6-16-year-old
Danish children assessed by the
Tanner-Whitehouse-2  method. Ann Hum Biol. 1982
May-Jun;9(3):277-81.
                  PMID: 7103407

                 4:
                   Wenzel A, Thylstrup A, Melsen B.
  Skeletal development and dental fluorosis in
12--14-year-old Danish girls from a fluoride
and a
                  non-fluoride community.
                  Scand J Dent Res. 1982
Apr;90(2):83-8

Best regards
Leif Kullman
Head, Radiology Division
King Saud University, Riyadh

Dear ORADLISTERS

I will not add to the discussion wether to interfere
or not as this is
entirely a matter for our US-collegaues.
I would however like to take the opportunity to start
another
discussion considering age - estimation from
radiographs.
A few years ago (late 80's) while working at a faculty
we were asked by
the physicians working at the local immigration office
to do
age-estimation from radiographs on a number of
immigrants, were
obviously the age was of importance for the decision.
(In Sweden that
was and is within the law due to medico-legal reasons)
What  was striking was that in many of the immigrants
there was a
considearble discrepancy between our age-estimations
and what the
immigrants said was to be their real age.   Although
the immigrants
involved certainly had reasons to lie about their
chronological age I
got the feeling that there may by considerable ethnic
differencies
adding to the major interindividual variation we all
know to exist. I
scanned the literature back then and it seemed that
most (all) of the
data (both bone age and dental age) were based upon
caucasians.
I know that Tom Ocholla had a preliminary paper on
this at the Osaka
meeting indicating racial differencies but I have
never seen anything
published on this matter.

Does anyone know of scientific studies where possible
ethnic and racial
differences in dental and skeletal maturity have been
investigated in
depth?

best wishes

Lennart Flygare






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