Journal of Civil & Legal Sciences
Open Access

Research Article

Medico-Legal Age Estimation in a Sub-adult Portuguese Population: Validation of Atlas Schour and Massler and London

Cesário C¹, Santos R^2,5, Pestana D^3,5 and Palmela Pereira C^4,5,6*

¹Faculty of Dentistry, University of Lisbon.

²Department of Mathematics, School of Technology and Management, Polytechnic Institute of Leiria.

³Department of Statistics and Operation Research, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon.

⁴Faculty of Dentistry, University of Lisbon, Scientific Consultant of Forensic Dentistry, National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.

⁵Centre of Statistics and Applications of University of Lisbon (CEAUL).

⁶Forensic Medicine at Laboratory of Forensic Sciences and Psychological Egas Moniz.

*Corresponding Author:

Palmela Pereira C
Auxiliary Professor
Dental Faculty, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Scientific Consultant of Forensic Dentistry at INMLCF
South Branch, Lisbon, Portugal
Director of the Forensic Medicine Service at Forensic Sciences and
Psychologist Laboratory Egas Moni
Tel: 00351914796217
E-mail: cristiana.pereira@fmd.ul.pt

Received Date: May 11, 2016; Accepted Date: May 30, 2016; Published Date: June 06, 2016

Citation: Cesário C, Santos R, Pestana D, Pereira CP (2016) Medico-Legal Age Estimation in a Sub-adult Portuguese Population: Validation of Atlas Schour and Massler and London. J Civil Legal Sci 5:196. doi:10.4172/2169-0170.1000196

Copyright: © 2016 Cesário C, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Introduction: Age estimation in children and adolescents often depends on morphological methods, such as examination of dental development. Objectives: The aim of this project was to validate, in a Portuguese population, two forensic methods of dental age estimation – Schour and Massler charts and the London atlas. Materials and Methods: The test sample was composed by 108 dental radiographs of living and known-age individuals. Dental age was estimated according to each method. Chronological age was then compared to the estimated dental age using individual t-test and paired t-test. Results: Results showed that the Schour and Massler charts underestimated age and the London atlas overestimated age. Nevertheless, the London atlas performed better in all measures. Mean differences for both the London atlas and Schour and Massler were 0,1389 and -5,4167 months respectively. Schour and Massler charts showed significant statistical difference between dental age and chronological age (p <0.05). Discussion and Conclusions: We conclude that, in the evaluated sample, age estimation using the London atlas represents an improvement in forensic age estimation from developing teeth. Further studies should be done with a larger Portuguese population sample.

Keywords